My exercise streak is still unbroken. I think I’m officially hooked. That time in the water jogging gives me a chance to do some thinking. Sometimes it’s about the dragonflies and hummingbirds that come to visit, sometimes it’s about what happened in school that day, and sometimes it’s just about K-pop or what I might like for dinner.

Yesterday, however, my head was full of 9/11. I couldn’t help but notice the planes overhead, and think about how it was just a normal day to go fly somewhere, just like it was on 9/11/01, until it wasn’t.

It seems that everyone over a certain age remembers where they were that day. I also remember the Oklahoma City bombing, and the snafu in Waco at the Branch Davidian complex. But of course 9/11 was in a class by itself. A horrific, difficult to grasp series of events that, until they happened, seemed impossible to most people. I saw what happened, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it.

Here we are, twenty years later, and the images are still gut-wrenching. The stories of the survivors, the stories of the heroes, and the stories of those they left behind stay with me. So many children lost a parent that day. So many parents lost a child.

I kept on jogging in place, taking in the quiet of my neighborhood, the sunny sky, and the planes that kept on flying, and I hoped for a peaceful future.