09/11/2026
We are the shop today 10-7
Today, we remember.
It is honestly hard for me to believe that 25 years have passed since September 11, 2001. In some ways, it feels like another lifetime. In others, the emotions of that day still feel incredibly close.
I was 31 years old then. I had already been running my shop for seven years, and life had settled into a rhythm that felt normal and familiar. None of us realized how much of that normal life was about to disappear.
A friend once told me that he felt sorry for people who don’t remember life before 9/11. That has always stuck with me because I understand exactly what he meant.
Life really was different before that morning. The world wasn’t perfect, but it felt more open, more trusting and less consumed by fear. We traveled differently. We looked at strangers differently. We didn’t live with the same constant awareness that something terrible could happen at any moment.
There was an innocence to everyday life that is difficult to explain to anyone who wasn’t there to experience it. For an entire generation, the world after 9/11 is the only world they have ever known. They will never completely understand what changed that day—or everything we lost beyond the lives themselves.
Like so many people, I remember watching the impossible unfold and trying to understand what I was seeing. I remember the shock, the silence and the terrible realization that the world would never be quite the same again.
But I also remember what followed. People reached out to one another. Strangers helped strangers. For a brief time, differences didn’t seem to matter as much. We were reminded of both the worst and the very best of humanity.
Today, I remember the nearly 3,000 people who never made it home. I remember the families whose lives were forever changed. I remember the first responders who ran toward danger while everyone else was trying to escape. I remember all those who carried the physical and emotional wounds of that day for the rest of their lives.
And I remember the world before September 11, 2001—a world that sometimes feels incredibly far away now.
Twenty-five years later, we still remember.
We must always remember.
Never forget.
