My Mom used to tell me stories about what it was like when JFK ran for president. She said he offered such hope and promise to the country at a very tumultuous time. Like most people with working brains who were old enough at the time, my Mother remembered exactly what she was doing, wearing, and where she was when she heard the news about JFK’S assassination.

9-11 was my generation’s JFK moment. Honestly, I’m glad my Mom wasn’t alive to see that.  No matter who you are, if you are an American, you lost someone in the attacks. We all did. We lost that part of ourselves that believed, like Anne Frank, that despite everything, people are really good at heart. It was a wake up call like no other we had ever had. And while I personally still believe in the good hearts of people, here lately it’s hard to remember that. Part of it is the lingering fear, or at the very least nagging concern, that it could happen again. Part of it is just me getting cynical in my mid-life years. Either way, like a lot of people, 9-11 changed me.

Word reached me right before the 2nd plane hit one of the towers. My sister Tina, who assumed I was not as blissfully unaware as I actually was, called me to let me know that our best friend Ursula and our cousin Tim were fine. Why wouldn’t they be fine? I remember thinking that through my ‘you-just-woke-me-up-and-I-barely-know-my-name’ haze. “Why wouldn’t they be fine,” I asked out loud this time.

“You haven’t heard?” Tina asked like I had been living on some island.

“Heard what? I just woke up when you called.”

She told me to turn on the news and didn’t offer an explanation.

“Which channel?” Clearly I had no clue.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s everywhere.”

I did as instructed and turned on the TV and was literally stunned and speechless with what I was seeing.

“We’re under attack, girl!” Tina has a flare for the melodramatic, but this time it felt like she was dead on.

The call was short but the day turned into a 20 hour marathon of news watching for me. When the first tower fell, it was surreal. I had been to the top of one of the towers during spring break my freshman year of high school. For all I know it was THAT tower. It wouldn’t matter because later, as we all know, the other one would fall too. I was in shock. A few hours later, I did something I’ve rarely done as an adult. I called my father. Only it really wasn’t my father I needed. I called my DADDY!

He hadn’t been Daddy for over a decade at that point and he hasn’t been Daddy again since. But on 9-11, the asshole I call Frank who I love but really don’t like, wasn’t Frank, Jeanie’s husband, or Frank Vanguard’s CEO, or Frank the cheating bastard… he was Daddy. He was the man who used to come home for lunch and right before he would leave to go back to work would pretend to be angry with his 3 young daughters, tell us to line up (pretending to go for the belt) and then give us a kiss on the cheek. He’s was the man who, no doubt in an effort to impress his daughters, played chicken with a rattle snake on the banks of a fishing pond. I needed to hear no other voice that day but his and my Mom’s and she wasn’t around. So I called him. The last time I spoke to him before that was about a year prior.

"Vanguard," his commanding voice said on the other end of the phone.

"Daddy?"

"Hi," he sounded really surprised, as if he too was aware of the last time I actually called him Daddy.

I didn’t bother with bullshit. I got right to the point. "I was just watching the news…"

"Yeah, unbelievable."

"I know I don’t tell you often enough and we’ve had our differences, but I love you and I just needed my Daddy."

He was quiet for a few seconds … perhaps letting it sink in.

"I love you too Baby."

Baby? I was 15 the last time I was Baby. This phone call is as vivid in my memory as the images that were playing on the screen. It seemed like I was living in a different world, and in fact, I was. It’s now the post 9-11 world and most of us are still trying to adjust.