♪Try to remember the kind of September...♪

"♪Try to remember the kind of September When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September♪ When grass was green and grain was yellow.
♪Try to remember the kind of September When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember...Then follow.♪ Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, ♪ follow, follow."

Darla Eichmann. I think that's how you spelled her name. HA She was the bubbly blonde female lead in Poly High's performance of "The Fantasticks", and for the life of me I can't remember who the male lead was... but this tune has stayed in my heart since middle school. A lovely, lilting, echoing air...a musical version of the breeze currently ruffling the leaves of the trees today.

Try to remember a different September than the one we remember today... a day where my friends Ann and Eva's husbands and my own personal Hurricane (then-spouse )  got locked down at Sheppard Air Force Base... a day when my brother Kirk's son sat on a military aircraft for hours on a tarmac, delayed for deployment because of the Towers' tragedy... a day when my little sister Alyson went into labor... a day when my three young sons, shown here, were on home school while we 'visited' Wichita Falls.

It's hard to remember "when life was so tender that no one wept except the willow..." as Tom Jones wrote in those lilting lyrics. Of course we wept, but not as a nation in mourning...this day in 2001 we wept collectively.

On a lighter note, remember that September has always had the power to make children cry, with the return to school. HA Just trying to lighten the mood. Every September has it's glories and it's sorrows. September 2001? Forever tinged with smoke and flames and loss and disbelief and horror, much like December 1941. 

Today try to balance those memories with the days 'when grass was green and grain was yellow...'. Most of us are grateful for a nation that rises from smoke and flames and loss with a renewed spirit. 

No matter what you remember about this date, remember that we are but passers-by in the annals of time, and that we cannot perpetually live in fear, lest we let the enemies of the past and present retain their power over us. We must live simply, and simply live, regardless of circumstance -- tragedy or victory. 

"♪Try to remember when life was so tender ♪That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender That love was an ember about to billow.

Try to remember, and if you remember...Then follow.♪ Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, ♪ follow, follow."