For our parents, it was the assassination of JFK. Ask any of them and they can remember exactly what they were doing at the time they found out JFK had been killed. I never understood that until September 11, 2001. Our generation can remember it like it was yesterday. For us, that moment, frozen in time, is and will always be 9/11.

Back then I was in community journalism at a small paper in Bristol, Pa. It was a Tuesday morning and I was on deadline. I showed up at 6 am, bleary-eyed and gripping a cup of coffee. The building was cavernous, with few windows, and the deadline was tight, so once those doors closed, it was easy to forget there was a whole world happening out there. Some time that morning, it was hard to say having only gotten about four hours of sleep, my phone rang. My best friend Lindsay was crying so hysterically that I couldn't understand her. Something about the towers, the towers. She was from Staten Island, so between her accent and her tears, that was all I got. Finally she told me to turn on the television, but the radio was all I had. The newscaster was grave, and there were lots of pauses between sentences as he struggled to tell the world we'd been hit by a terrorist attack.

The expletive I yelled brought other editors into my office. I couldn't even talk, I just pointed to the radio. As we were absorbing the news of the first plane, news came of the second. It all runs together, but I definitely remember feeling the bottom drop out of my stomach twice, in quick succession like a one-two punch. Then, later, feeling still sicker as news came of the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa. It felt like the world was coming to an end. Quickly I grabbed my phone to call my boyfriend's brother, who lived in Spanish Harlem but who worked somewhere in Manhattan. There is nothing scarier than the all circuits busy message when you are trying to get a hold of someone during a tragedy.

What could we do? No one could leave. The paper had to go out – that fucker always has to go out. All we could do was move back and forth between our production stations and the radio, until someone ran home to get a small television so we could see what was happening. Hearing it on the radio was hard enough, but actually seeing the plane fly into the towers made me want to claw my eyes out. This was before the company that owned us went completely electronic, so you can't believe how hard it is to manually paste up a newspaper while crying so hard you can barely see.

I called my dad to make sure he hadn't gone to the city that day. Though we were scattered across New Jersey and suburban Philadelphia at that time, we were a family born and bred in Coney Island, Brooklyn. So calls needed to be made to make sure family members who worked downtown had made it back to Brooklyn, safe. I later found out that my uncle, Harry Goody, was one of the almost 3,000 lost that day. Though I hadn't seen him since I was a child, it was still a shock to find out that a family member had been lost in the tragedy.

Midway through the day I couldn't take it anymore. I drove into downtown Bristol and wandered into a church. I hadn't stepped foot in a church in years, but I was overwhelmed by a need for comfort and belief in something higher than the humans who had hurt each other so deeply. Despite being an agnostic, I did take comfort in the dark wooden pews and the solemn feeling of the empty church.

I returned to the office to finish my deadline and went home for the long couch-held vigil, switching between the news stations to get as much information as possible. We really were all patriots that day, and for a long time to come. Never had I identified so much with my country; at that time I identified more with being an American than I did with my race, gender, and all those other boxes we put ourselves in. I even bought one of those giant flag t-shirts with "We will never forget" plastered all over the back. I found it when I was moving a few months ago. I almost threw it away, but then I put it back in the box. I might never wear the shirt, but it's true. We will never forget.

It's likely on your mind today, too. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Image credit: Flickr user noamgalai.