Is it possible to forget?

If you were older than, say, 8 in Spt. 2001, I don't know how you can not have every image of that day burned onto your brain. I remember hundreds of little details, even from before I heard the news. The perfect blue of the sky as I rode my bike down Foothill Expressway. That second set of rings on my cell phone from my husband in our apartment in Menlo Park. Stopping after a light and taking the cell phone out of the little pouch on the back rack of my new Bianchi. Listening to the message and not believing. The sign-off of that message: "Be careful." Calling friends who had relatives in New York. Looking up at the plane-less sky.

I still feel a twinge of something -- dread? -- every time I see a jet high in the sky. I still have regular nightmares where I see a plane crash.

I know that sad, sick feeling I felt when my husband and I walked past Ground Zero during our trip last spring to see a game at Yankee Stadium. (Why do people pose for pictures in front of those fences?)