I remember tasting the cool air that smelt of a crisp nutmeg aroma mixed with the city's urban smog as the wind brushed through my brown hair. The crisp, autumn trees that were changing from their summer green color to warm colors like red and orange seemed to greet me as they waved their falling leaves. Suddenly, my mother tugged at the silky sleeve of my dress. "Come on, Audrey," she said with a giddy tone, "we don't want to be late!"

I had no idea why she was rushing; sure, we've visited all the essential landmarks of Manhattan like Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, and the Nutcracker on Broadway. But I remember how merry her expression was than usual on that day and how she skipped along the gravelstone pavement with me as we both elegantly dodged the crevices and cracks that laid in our way. Finally, she stopped and motioned me towards what seemed to be like the tallest skyscraper in the city. There were flags everywhere outside of the entrance: some blue, some red with a hint of yellow, others' shades mixed with warm and col colors, and then there was one enormous flag I recognized that stood out from all of the rest with red, white, and blue. "Ta-da!" my mother said as she presented the building, "today's 'Bring Your Kid to Work Day!' Audrey, you're finally going to see where Mommy works!"

Right then, I jumped into my mother's arms with so much enthusiasm. For all of my six year old life, I've always wondered where my mother went when she kissed me goodbye in the mornings and where she returned from when I embraced at our front door. "What kinds of things are we going to do here, mommy?" I asked.

"Oh, you'll see soon enough, sweetie," my mother said with a grin.

When we walked into the building, I was greeted with friendly faces and kind smiles. I saw businessmen with briefcases coming and going, rushing and hurrying. I even saw one man's coffee sway and spill by his quick pace, but he just shrugged and made a funny face when he saw me giggling from behind my mother. We walked over to where all of the elevators were and my mother pushed the button that read, "77th floor," and right as she did, the elevator bolted out of the ground. We were going as fast as a rocket; I saw the floors change from "floor 20," to "floor 35" in a matter of seconds; it was like being on a roller coaster. When the elevator doors opened, streamers with tricolors mixed with blue, yellow, green, and red camouflaged the floor, balloons covered the ceiling, and entertainers like a magician, clowns, and even a DJ were stationed at different parts of the 77th floor. Throughout the whole day, I was in a six year old's paradise; I preformed magic tricks with the magician, laughed at the goofy clowns, and danced with my mother and some of her other work companions. It didn't matter if you were an adult, an elder, or an adolescent that day; we all laughed until our lungs gave out, ate until our stomaches ached, and danced until the music died down. At the end of the day, my mother swayed to my side and asked how my day was. "You have the best job ever, mommy!" I said while jumping around her.

We both laughed and she entangled her fingers within mine. "Just you wait until next year. I heard something about a jumping castle being brought all the way to the 77th floor!"

I grinned with the most anxious look on my face and envisioned the whole thing happening once again. I will tell you now, reader, that I never got to see the magician, nor the clowns, nor my mother's colleagues ever again because, nine months later, a plane crashed into my mother's building. I remember how on that morning, the clear, pale blue sky deceived us with its promise of a beautiful day. How on that morning, I remember glancing at a purple slip of paper with drawings of lilacs along the borders that read, "First Grade Tea, September 11, 9am to 11am. How on that day, my mother dodged a bullet.

Nobody explained to us why we were dismissed early, I just remember the pitter patter of feet rising through the halls as teachers and parents rounded us up as if we were a herd of helpless sheep. When I got home, the ringing of phones rang like bells of an ambulance. I ran through the house to tell my father, who was working home at the time, about the good news of our early dismissal. But, at the bottom of the stairs leading into my basement, my mother was waiting for me, an unfamiliar reversal of our ritual when she came home from work. At first, she didn't make eye contact with me, nor did she acknowledge my presence, she just stared blankly at the white walls; she looked drained. "Mommy," I started, " Why is everyone calling us at the same time? Why were we let out of school? Why aren't you at work? What's happening?"

She looked at me hard dispite her attempt to look calm and composed. She swallowed and I could see her neck tightening while her clear hazel eyes became glassy and wet. "Sweetie," she choked, "we need to talk."

We talked on the very top step of the stairs while I sat on her lap. She didn't talk for a while, she just stared at the daisy shaped buttons on my dress and smoothly ran over them with her fingers. "Sweetie…" she finally said, "Mommy isn't at work today because…" she trailed off, "because she no longer has an office building."

The questions in my head stirred but before I could ask anything, she clarified herself. "You see sweetie," she started, "some very bad people crashed a plane into my building; its gone."

I looked at her with disbelief. I can tell you, reader, that I wasn't exactly horrified nor afraid by the thought of Al Qaeda's actions and the reality of the devastation simply because I wasn't old enough to realize the reality of this tragedy on a larger scale, but what I did realize was the reality of never going to my mother's office building again; something smaller and easier to come to that conclusion. The memories of that on day I visited the decorated tricolor office, all of the clowns, the magician, and the workers; all of the joyful memories destroyed, obliterated, gone. They seemed to disappear like a trail of smoke vanishing with the wind. "Why did the bad people do that, mommy?"

My mother shook her head and looked to the ground. "I don't know, Audrey. These people did this because they claimed that God wanted them to."

"But mommy God is good, why would he want to crash a plane into your building?" I asked.

She then looked to the ceiling as if she were talking to someone else. "He didn't want this to happen," she whispered, "he wouldn't want this to happen."

Finally, I asked the most simple yet hardest question to answer. "Mommy," I started, "did a lot of people die?"

Right then and there, the thing that made my mother seem collected broke like glass shattering after being dropped. Tears rolled down her cheek and she quickly hugged me around my shoulders with her knuckles clenched and her head buried into my chest. I watched her back shiver and shake while she tried to catch her gasping breaths from her silent sob. "Yes…" she finally mumbled into my dress, "yes…"

With one hand, I cradled her head and stroked her head with the other as she would do when I got hurt or was upset about something. "Its okay," I whispered, "everything will be okay."

It almost seems too ironic that I retained the only memory I have of the World Trade Center, especially since I was five years old at the time. Even though it was exciting to see my mother's office for first time, I had plenty of other exciting moments that were way more important to me at the time such as Christmas, any of my birthdays, or even just a trip to the candy store. So, why did my mind choose to remember the World Trade Center right before 9/11? Our memory chooses for us what we remember and what we forget. I don't know why we retain random information or why we forget some of our most cherished moments, but what I do know is that we remember the irregular: moments where a situation strays from out of the clear, pale blue sky. Our minds are wired in a way that we notice the abnormal. For example, if you were looking at a house with a white picket fence, you could easily spot that one crooked picket our of the hundred that are surrounding the house. This is why these crooked pickets in our lives tend to be the most meaningful. Today, I treasure both of these memories because I am one of the only teenagers in my generation who still remember how much fun the elevator roller coaster was or how the colors of the waving flags outside of the towers glistened in the wind. Maybe with my mind, somehow, it knew that I would want to remember what the inside of World Trade Center looked like, what it felt like to be in those mesmerizing towers, what it felt like to be around the many innocent workers who vanished with the wind. One thing is for sure though; I will never forget the people I met who are gone but are still alive in my memory; I will never forget how fortunate I am to still have my mother growing up with me; and I will never forget 9/11.