9/11/01

September 11, 2001, Tianjin, China

We were about a month into our move to China and getting settled into live in China.  I hadn't ventured out much yet on my own due to my lack of language abilities.  It was an exciting day for us...our son took his first steps.

'We learned that our son would be born with a club foot in an ultrasound about halfway through the pregnancy...born in another time, he would have never walked, he would have been labeled disabled, but he was born in the year 2000.  He had his first cast put on at 10 days olds.  He would go through several casts as they tried to mold his foot to the way it should be.  After 3 months, it just didn't work as well as they had hoped.  Now it would be surgery and a full leg cast.  Surgery was in January and it wasn't until April that he was cast free.  The first 9 months of his life, his foot was bound.  We left for China in August, with his special shoes he wore 22 hours a day.'

Now, on September 11th, 2001 in our apartment in China, he takes his first steps from Mike to me, from me to Mike.  We were so excited to see him walk, and he really wasn't behind schedule even from babies without the complications, he was 14 months old!

I went to bed that night, a happy mom, relieved that he would walk and be a normal kid!!  I slept peacefully that night, unknowingly, back home, in America, everyone else's world was being turned upside down!  Mike had stayed up late that night and had been on the internet, he let me sleep, and told me about it in the morning.  Internet access was weak, Chinese tv didn't cover it that well, or at least in English for me!  It wasn't until October, when we went on a day trip to Beijing that I saw a Time magazine with pictures of the disaster.  It was unbelievable to see!  When we returned to America, we watched documentaries and movies and experienced it more then, than in September.

So I may not remember it quite like many of you, but I do remember and will never forget!