A year ago yesterday, the biggest news in my family was that the day before, my sister and her family felt their first California earthquake. They'd moved to "the Valley" a month earlier, and while they were on the phone with my parents, my sister said, "We're having an earthquake, I'll call you back!" My Dad e-mailed this to a bunch of people and closed with, "There's not much else exciting. I hope you're all well."

The next day, of course, made the whole country wish for "not much else exciting."

It's been a year. Today is another beautiful, bright, sunny day. A year ago, at 7.00 in the morning, I left my apartment and walked to the school next door to vote for the next Democratic candidate for the mayor of New York. Then I took the subway to work, and started my day. I was in my boss's office, going over some results, when a co-worker stepped in and asked, "Did you hear? They say a plane flew into the World Trade Center." My boss said, "Yes, I just read about that." It was the first I'd heard of it, though, so my boss printed the article out for me from her AOL News, and after we finished discussing what changes I should make to my models, I scanned the article quickly. Two planes had hit the WTC, apparently, which made no sense at all. It wasn't horrific or devastating or anything yet, it was just crazy and it seemed like it must be a mistake, because it just didn't make any sense. So as I made the changes to my model and re-ran it, I went to nytimes.com and cnn.com and read that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. I called one of my best friends from college who lived in Washington, DC, and when she answered I said, "It's Marnie, are you okay? I just heard about a plane going into the Pentagon." She said, "I'm fine, I'm nowhere near it -- but are you okay?" A few minutes later, I checked e-mail and found an e-mail from her asking the same question, which she'd sent before I called her: "I don't know where your office is, so I just want to email and make sure you're not stuck in the middle of that hellacious cloud of smoke I'm seeing on TV. This is the scariest thing I've ever seen." That was my first slight inkling that this might be a big deal.

We were sent home from work early, and we had to walk because they'd closed the subways. I left work around 12.30 and got home an hour later. During the walk, we'd heard a plane overhead, and everyone -- all the hundreds and hundreds of people walking home along Central Park West -- everyone froze. We found out later that it was an Air Force jet, patrolling over the city. But none of us knew that then, and we half-expected it to dive-bomb us.

One year. The yahrtzeit on the Jewish calendar was a week and a half ago. Have I found closure? In many ways, yes. But reading about it, watching stories about it on television, even talking about it still makes me cry.

I bought all the newspapers on Thursday, 13 September -- the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post. I saved them all, and I saved all the Newsweeks for a few months, until Enron finally knocked terrorism off the cover of the magazine. At my Mom's suggestion, I threw out the newspapers and magazines -- and the print-out of the news story from my boss, and the memorial sponsored by Hearst Magazines that showed up in Cosmo with the Pledge of Allegiance -- when I moved across the country in June. Sometimes it's good to let go a little.

A week or two after the attacks, I remember talking to a good friend from work and wondering when I'd get through a day without thinking about it. When I'd have a whole day with no conversations about terrorism, or "where were you when...," or "did you know anyone" -- a whole day without being overwhelmed by fear and anger and shock and heartache because it did ache, it hurt and I was afraid it would be unbearable, and I couldn't imagine how much more unbearable it must have been for the families of the victims. And my friend said, "It'll probably be a long time."

I had pretty much made it, though, by the time I moved. There were still occasional conversations, and of course every article about homeland security mentioned the attacks, but it wasn't every day anymore.

Then I moved to LA, and as the one-year anniversary inched closer, people started talking about it all again. People who knew I'd moved from New York asked what it had been like. One person who didn't realize I wasn't a life-long Californian started asking, "I wonder what it was like in New York that day." So I told him what it was like for me, trying to leave out the emotion and the anguish and say only, "this is what I did, and this is what happened next," just the facts ma'am, because I didn't want to cry in front of someone I'd just met.

One year. Last night I lit a memorial candle. Last year, amid all the devastation, we began a New Year a week after the attacks. The idea of celebrating a Yom Tov -- a good day -- was nearly inconceivable, but one of my best friends from college said it well: "shana tova and here's to a new year that begins better than the last one ended."

We've begun another year, and once again the rabbis focused their sermons on the attacks and how we can and should respond. This year, my parents' rabbi suggested that we not wait until the next tragedy to reconnect with friends and loved ones, that we say "I love you" as often as we can. And today I got flowers from the friend I'd called in DC last year, with a note that said, "It's a good time to be thankful for friends."

It's been a year. It's time to take a deep breath and sing a new song.