Ten years ago today, my mom woke me up early for school. She knocked on my door and told me the news.

We turned on the radio and listened. A day or two before, concerned that my brother was watching too much TV, my parents had unplugged the TV and hid the cables.

At school we listened to the radio too. (Those TVs didn’t work either.) I had just started my senior year of high school and that day showed us new sides of our new teachers.

That afternoon, I called my Uncle Rich with a trite but still time-sensitive question:

“Did the lobsters arrive?”

Yes, they’d landed that morning, before the airspace closed, an overnight delivery from Legal Sea Foods.

My dad is from Boston and Legal Sea Foods lobster-and-clam-chowder dinners have always been a special gift in my family. This meal consisted of four lobsters crawling around in an insulated box, along with four bibs and four cups of clam chowder.

Just a few months before, this nuclear family had tragically shrunken from four eaters to three, and my cousin Scott invited me to share this special meal with him and Uncle Rich and Aunt Jackie.

We carefully boiled the lobsters and heated the chowder, all glued to the TV (which worked properly, unlike the TVs at my house and school.)

We watched George W. Bush solemnly honor the victims and announce the creation of a new government unit, the Department of Homeland Security.

Fast forward ten years.

Now Scott is a lawyer with the Department of Homeland Security. His job description includes protecting the United States of America from very bad people.

I now live in Chile, a country where “September 11” brings up an entirely different set of memories.

But for me, I’ll think of dysfunctional TVs, live lobster for four, and Alan Jackson’s Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning? which is playing on repeat as I type this post.

Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?
Were you in the yard with your wife and children
Or working on some stage in L.A.?
Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke
Risin’ against that blue sky?
Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry?

Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones
And pray for the ones who don’t know?
Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble
And sob for the ones left below?
Did you burst out in pride for the red, white and blue
And the heroes who died just doin’ what they do?
Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer
And look at yourself and what really matters?

So, where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?

Notes on the photos: lobster and chowder photo is from LegalSeaFoods.com (not an affiliate link) and photo of Scott is from of my dad’s digital photo archive, posted with Scott’s permission.