The anniversary of 9/11 crept up on little cat-feet this year. Not to say that I have forgotten about it entirely – but it is receding into the past, faster and faster. It is taking it’s place in history with other tumultuous and tragic events. So many anniversaries – of the start of WWII, and of WWI as well, of Gettysburg, the sinking of the Titanic, the destruction of Galveston by a hurricane, and the Nueces Massacre. Children who were babies and toddlers on the day that the towers fell in a vast gush of smoke and debris are now in middle school, on the cusp of being teenagers.

That world before is and increasingly a thing of the past, as far away in time for them as the high summertime of Edwardian England is to me. For those who lost parents, friends, coworkers and neighbors, the memory will linger much longer, until the end of their own lives. For those of us who were merely alive on that day, and spent it glued to the television or the radio, cold with horror and dread, feeling all the certainties of our world splinter invisibly, the horror will fade – has probably already begun to fade. In another decade, perhaps two or three or more, September 11th will be just another fall day, and only enthusiasts for historical trivia will remember the significance unprompted.

But time has not yet come. Today, we remember again.