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The first plane had hit. Maybe the second had, too. I don't recall for sure. I don't recall much.

I remember being in the hallway by the bookcase when I heard that the Pentegon had been hit. I was looking for my phone to call my mom. All I remember of that conversation was saying, "This is bad. This is bad," over and over.

I got my head together enough to try to call my teacher, but got her voice mail. At a complete loss of what to do, I left for class.

I live just south of the airport, and my class was just north of the airport. The highway connecting the two runs under the flight path of all the jets coming from the east. I knew that all planes had been ordered down at that point, and I watched their bellies, one by one, as they came over me to land.

I had never in my life been as frightened as I was, watching those planes - so many of them - landing above me. Their silence over the next three days served as a constant reminder that the world had changed, right down to the background white noise of my home several thousand miles away from the attacks.

I walked into class a few minutes late. Everyone was taking a pop quiz.

A fucking quiz?

Don't you people know that our world is ending?

I took a seat by the door because figured I'd need to run out of the room to puke at some point during the class.

Turns out, no one else in the room knew what had happened. That was the last moment in my life in which I'd be in a room of Americans who had been afforded the luxury of innocence.

Despite my news/info junkie tendancies, I couldn't watch any of the news coverage. When I got home from school, I parked the TV on Nickelodeon and proceeded to watch nothing but "Spongebob Squarepants" for the better part of a week. Occasionally I'd flip to MTV or VH1, but they kept playing Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah set to images of NYC so I stopped.

I didn't cry.

I just wanted to sleep. But I have trouble sleeping when I'm stressed, so before bed every night, I downed a handful of Tylenol PM, which kept me hazy during most of my waking hours.

I didn't listen to music. I couldn't risk bringing any emotions to the surface because I knew that when they surfaced, they would drown me.

I cooked. I made every comfort food I could find. Cuban Arroz con Pollo. Southern baked chicken and dressing. Lasagna.

I don't know how many days passed before I cried. It happened while watching an episode of Behind the Music featuring Blind Melon. I never liked them. When Shannon Hoon's widow cried about the daughter he left behind when he died of a heroin overdose, I finally heaved sobs for every child who'd been orphaned that week.

A year later, I spent the day driving around St. Louis with my camera, taking photos. I snapped shots of the American flags everywhere, from the drive-thru window at Burger King to the antenneas of every car on a used car lot. I stood on the patio of a restaurant next to the runway and took photos of planes taking flight. I took beautiful photos of the sun shining through the Gateway Arch. A series of those photos in black and white hang on my dining room wall. They've been there for so long that I don't instantly think of why I took them every time I look at them.

There are two photos I took that day that, if I ever happen to lose my copies of them, I'll still be able to envision them in my mind's eye. I'll never forget them.

This is a gas station B. goes by twice a day, since it's near his train station. Five years ago today, the owner of the station placed the words "Act of war. Nuke now." on the board. A year later, this is what remained.

It's easy to declare war when you're too fucking lazy to maintain your message and someone else is doing your fighting.

This was taken on a bench beneath the Gateway Arch. I have no idea who this woman is. She sat there with her shopping bag clutched in her hands, head bowed, the entire time I was there while her husband and young son played nearby in the grass.

I wanted to sit on the bench next to her and cry. Instead, I kept my distance, only getting as close to her as my zoom lens allowed.

Today, I once again vowed that if the TV was turned on, it would be to kids shows. Clara Jane and I stayed in our jammies. We painted and played with Play-Doh and cookie cutters. We ate chicken noodle soup for lunch. We took a warm bubble bath to clean up all the paint, Play-Doh and chicken soup. We read from her big Curious George book and watched some "Sesame Street".

Elmo's World today was about firefighters.

I folded my arms over the back of the couch, laid my head down, and sobbed.

When I looked up, Clara Jane was watching me, looking concerned. I smiled and told her everything was okay.

It's not.

She asked for her slippers. I went to her room to fetch them, taking advantage of the privacy to release the pressure valve. I gave myself 30 seconds to sob as hard as I could into the back of one of her stuffed Basset hounds before pulling my shit together. I took her on my lap and we sat on the couch, watching Elmo while I put the pink slippers on her feet.

At naptime, she did something she's never done before. She said, "I want to sleep in the big bed" as she ran into my bedroom, the soles of those slippers slapping the new floor.

We crawled into bed, and I figured she was just playing the game she calls "Uppie Uppie" where she gets on our bed, pretends to sleep, and then bounces like a monkey.

Instead, we laid there and I asked, "Do you want to snuggle?"

Clara Jane's not much of a snuggler. She's got far better things to do. I understand this, as I'm not a snuggler either. But today, she looked at me and nodded.

So we snuggled under the down comforter, resting and quiet, save for several outbursts of tickling and giggling. Eventually I moved her to her bed. She needed to sleep and I needed to have some time away from her to get my emotions in order.

Today I've seen several mentions around the web of people saying they don't understand the sadness people are feeling today. 9/11 wasn't the biggest event in history and we need to just get over it.

I can only think that these ideas were presented by people who are young enough that they didn't get to experience the luxury of innocence for as long as I did. Five years is a long time to a 20-year-old. They've spent a quarter of their lives living like this. Maybe it seems more normal to them than it does to me.

I was almost 29 five years ago. I think people in my generation, the ones who experienced the attacks somewhat near the middle of their lives, are going to be the ones who have the hardest time letting this go. Or, rather, we have a unique perspective of having half of our lives "before" and half "after". I don't know if I feel sorry for the younger ones because less of their lives will be spent not entertaining the idea of people flying planes into buildings on purpose, or if I envy them for being able to normalize it and move on.

Now I understand a little more about what Vietnam and Kennedy's assassination meant to my parents' generation. And what Pearl Harbor meant to my grandparents' generation. The events they saw weren't the biggest events in history, that's true. But they were the biggest events in their history, and that matters. A lot.

I can't change that this is the world that my child lives in. I can protect her from it for a little while, but it's there, and she'll know. But I don't want her to know now. I don't want her to feel like she has to comfort me because of what I know and what I saw.

Not yet.