I volunteered at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11. My friend and I drove down to New York and served meals to firemen in a food tent near the still smoking, devastated site.

One day, a policeman who had come through the tent a few times asked us if we wanted to see Ground Zero for ourselves---and at a time when virtually no one had access to the site beyond the country’s politicians and tireless public safety teams.

I remember that when he asked us we immediately put down whatever we were doing and followed him without saying much, but we knew we were being given unique access to something both tragic and historic--something few people would ever see and something we would never forget. We were aware that the scene would be etched into our dreams for the rest of our lives, and become a part of our own story.

And I think we both wondered as we walked why he had chosen us. This policeman, who was now our guide, was solemn and dutiful---not at all using the moment he was leading us to for any other reason than to share it with us. It was clear that he wanted us to see it, wanted these two meal makers from the food tent to bear witness to something that he faced everyday.

He led us up a street and through a police barricade and told us not to take any pictures and then we walked into Ground Zero--- us two young mothers from Massachusetts who hadn't been doing anything special on September 10th.

To describe what we saw inside will always be impossible.

It's everything you saw on TV, but it was the feeling inside the site that I remember most. Not the twisted steel and the abandoned plates of eggs on a restaurant table---but the feeling. There was this heavy silence, but it wasn't---at least to me---the silence of death but the silence of reverence.

It was reverence.

Even today---all these years later---that reverence is what I carry as the remnants from that day.

It's a reverence for those who died, those who searched and rescued, those whose lives were touched so intimately by that tragedy.

And I will remember how small I felt standing amongst the piles of steel and dust and leaving with my head bowed but with an incredible feeling of hope...that one day this hell would lead us to a world that has no rubble...