Mom called me on 9/11 at 7am (Pacific time). She said “something terrible has happened.”

For next moment, which agonizingly dragged on, I assumed a family member had somehow died overnight. Was it dad? One of my siblings?

Finally she continued “some planes were hijacked and flown into the Twin towers.” It feels so odd, and utterly selfish of me, but when it dawned that she was conveying a world event and not a personal tragedy within our family, it was such a relief. I know that is ultimately the wrong reaction to immediately learning about 9/11 but I was also learning in that moment that my own family was safe.

I learned that day to never word something in a way that would cause a person to make panicked guesses, even for the fleeting moment between two sentences. Good news or bad, just say it.