Where were you when 9/11 happened?

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was living in Upstate New York: Albany, the state capital.

Unbeknownst to us on the ground, early that morning, two planes hijacked by religious fundamentalists had turned left at our fair city and headed down the Hudson River to Manhattan, where at 8:46 a.m, the first jet slammed into one of towers of the World Trade Center.

I was in the shower, listening to Howard Stern talk about not sealing the deal with Pamela Anderson when he had the chance, when his producer came in and said something to the effect of “I don’t want to spoil the fun, but a plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

Like everyone else, I figured they meant some idiot in a Piper Cub lost control and bounced of one of the 1,300-foot buildings.

I got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around myself and padded out to the living room to watch CNN. I was watching at 9:03 when the second plane hit.

At that moment there was no longer any doubt, we were under attack.

I sat in my towel, stunned, with my jaw hanging down somewhere around my belly button, watching the replays over and over.

When the Pentagon was attacked, I got scared for the first time. Terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center eight years earlier, but attacking the Pentagon? That is an attack on the U.S. military and the U.S. government. That is an Act of War.

First, I called one of my best friends, who at the time worked in the building across the street from the Empire State Building. I got his wife and told her to tell him to get the he– out of there.

Then I got dressed, jumped in my car and went to work. I was a reporter and there was work to do.

I was driving in, still listening to Howard broadcast live from New York City (he stayed on the air until after noon, giving New Yorkers an outlet and providing information from the city to the rest of us listening) when the towers collapsed. I had to brush away tears to stay on the road.

Arriving at the office of my weekly paper covering two suburban Albany towns, I called my editor and said “What do we do? No one is going to care about the leash law. How do I cover this?”

“Just stay put. Make some calls. Listen to the police scanner.”

Many of us knew someone affected.

I made some calls and learned that the town clerk’s son was supposed to be at a meeting in one of the towers and she had yet to hear from him. Later in the day, I learned that the town Democratic chairman Todd, and his wife were staying at the hotel across the street. Both were out of the hotel and in the city when the planes hit and Todd had to literally dive into a restaurant as the cloud of collapsing building expanded up the street.

In the end, all were OK. Pat’s son’s meeting was rescheduled from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. so he hadn’t arrived yet and Todd and his wife eventually found each other and caught a train back to Albany, though his description of seeing the smoke rise from Manhattan as they travelled north still stays with me.

The next day, I did a story about how every newspaper at the local newsstand was sold out. Every. Single. One. I still remember the quote: “We even sold out of the Investor’s Business Daily. We never do that.”

More were on their way and I got in line to wait for the arrival of a stack of New York Times, New York Posts and New York Daily News. I still have my copies of all three, as well as the Albany Times-Union, the Saratogian – my paper – and the USA Today.

I still drag them out from time to time, especially on the anniversary. Seeing those pages brings back all of the emotion of those first, initial days after the attacks.

I remember the anger. I remember the fear. I remember the anticipation. But most of all, I remember the patriotism and the renewed sense that we were Americans and all in it together.

It has been only seven short years since that day, but it feels like a different age entirely. Our leadership has squandered that sense of unity and we have fallen back into our usual positions at yelling at each other from inside heavily fortified political bunkers.

The masterminds behind the attacks still live in the same relative freedom they had before the attack.

And I still want justice.

The site itself has become the perfect metaphor for the post-Sept. 11 years. Despite the amazing work and effort from construction workers around the country to clear out what has come to be known as Ground Zero within months of the attacks, the giant, empty pit remains there today.

No consensus has been reached on what to do with site and how to properly honor the victims. It is all complicated by the combination of public and private ownership of the land and financing to rebuild as well as having to fight victims’ families, who view the site as hallowed ground.

As I said, following the attacks, I was never prouder to be an American. The words “oh say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave?” resonated like never before.

But to me, being an American means looking to the future, while never forgetting the past. We need to start rebuilding the giant scar in the Manhattan skyline so our giant, national wound also begins to heal.

And maybe once we focus on healing our scars, we can focus on catching the bastards who did this to us once and for all.