9/11

I have gone back and forth in my head about whether or not to write about 9/11. It seems kind of, I don't know, trite maybe, and like jumping on a band wagon.There are often tragedies that get played out on a national scene that, while we can appreciate how awful they must for the people directly related, do not really have anything to do with us. The Casey Anthony trial comes to mind- wow, what a tragic, horrible story and situation. It is easy for people to obsess over things like that, and to get emotionally invested, but really, it is not something that happened to me, and not something that changes my life in any way. And with 9/11, at first glance it seemed to me like maybe I would be taking on too much ownership by writing about it. I wasn't in New York, and I didn't know anyone at the time who died (although I now know someone who lost his brother in the towers). And yet when I think about 9/11, I'm thinking of something personal. And when I try to consider why that is, this phrase keeps coming to mind: "it happened to all of us". The same thing did not happen to all of us, but something happened to us, and I don't consider it a stretch, or like I'm taking on something I'm not entitled to when I make that statement. And I know that I'm not writing about it here for any other reason than to record my memories and my thoughts, and to help me process what has been weighing on my mind. And since it happened to you, too, maybe it will help you. I hope so.

On Facebook yesterday, a "friend" posted this question: if you had to talk about 9/11 to a group of high schoolers that don't remember it, what would you want them to know?". That question really caught my attention. I've wondered to myself several times over the past year what Elliott's world will be like to him, since he lives in a world where 9/11 happened a decade before he was even born. For him, it will be a world where the people who teach him in school will have a real possibility of barely remembering it, or even not remembering it at all. I've thought about what I'll tell him, and I relayed a little of that in my response to this person:

"What I would tell them is that we lived in a world where that was impossible right up until the moment it happened. You couldn't even comprehend it because to most Americans there was no such thing as the Taliban or no such person as Osama bin laden. Even if you followed politics closely the idea that we could be attacked was truly laughable. People joined the army with no expectation of combat. It really made you look at the world in an entirely new way."

And that is, for me, at the core of what happened, to me and many others, on 9/11. The way I understood the whole world changed. What happened on 9/11 didn't just seem impossible before it happened, in my mind, it WAS impossible. And those two realities, a world where an attack on US soil was so impossible that you never even had the thought "an attack on US soil is impossible" and the reality that it just happened, collided so fiercly for me and many others that day. Here is my memory:

I was a sophomore in college, a month and a half away from turning 20. I had a class that started at 9:00am that met in a classroom in my dorm building, so I rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes and went straight down there. My 2 roommates were still asleep, or in class, or something, I just remember that I didn't talk to anyone and I didn't turn on the tv or check my email or anything. Half way through class, about 5 minutes to 10:00, we had a break and I ran up to my room as I typically did. I opened the door and saw my roommates sitting in our living room area of our dorm room watching t.v., and one of them turned to me and said "2 planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York, and one just crashed into the Pentagon. We were watching it, and we actually saw the second plane crash live, like behind the reporter, they didn't know it was happening or anything, and we saw the one of the towers collapse just a minute ago"

I saw down to watch the coverage and remember feeling incredibly confused. I asked immediately, "Why? What happened? It couldn't have been an accident, right?" and one of my roommates responded, "its an attack". I don't remember exactly what else we said, but I remember asking an attack from who, and I think one of them said they think Afghanistan, and I thought, is that still a country? Why would they do that? After about 5 minutes, when our break time was up, I ran down to the classroom intending to tell anyone who didn't know and then come back upstairs, but on the way down I saw the professor and other students in the lounge of the building watching the television there, lookign like they were in shock. The professor told us that class was cancelled, and that she was going to pick up her kids from school. I remember her words were "I just need to go home and be with my husband and hug my children". I went back up to my room, and on the way saw one of my favorite professors, a younger guy who taught English. I told him that someone had hijacked planes and flown them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He laughed and then said, "are you joking?" and I said no and that he needed to go find a t.v. When I got back up to my room, my roommates told me that another plane had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, they thought it was related and that they were headed for D.C. but they must not have made it.

I didn't know what to do but felt like I should do something. I felt like I needed to make sure that everyone I loved knew about this. I called my parents and my mom answered; they were asleep. I asked her if she'd heard about the attacks and she said, "what attacks?". I told her that some planes were hijacked with people on them, and they flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and another one crashed in Pennsylvania on its way to D.C., and as I was talking I heard her wake up my dad and say "Gary turn on the t.v.". I stayed on the phone for a minute with her while she watched the television, then got off so that she could figure out what was happening.

For the next 15 minutes or so we sat in mostly silence, except for a random comment by one of us about how many people were on board, or where the other plane might have been heading, or if there were more. We learned that the President ordered all the planes grounded and for military people to shoot down any that were still in the air. We learned the words Taliban and bin Laden, and that there were people in the world who wanted to kill Americans. Knowledge that many in the world knew, and that we were shocked to find out.

Around 10:30 I called my mom back. The numbness had wore off and I was feeling really scared and shaky and like I wanted to cry, and I just needed to call my mom and talk to her. I took the phone into our bathroom and called my mom, and when she answered I said hello and my voice broke. I sat down on the edge of the tub and started crying and she said, "Heidi, are you ok?" I sniffed loudly trying to compose myself and she said, "it's ok honey". I know we talked a little more but I don't remember what we said.

Like the rest of the country, and maybe the world, I spent the next hours and days watching television and taking breaks from watching television. My memories of that time are probably like yours- seared images of the buildings collapsing, of people standing in the streets of New York covered in ash and blood, their faces staring horrified at what they were seeing, fire fighters covered in black and grey soot and ash taking breaks to drink water, the Brooklyn bridge covered in a mass of thousands of people as Manhattan was evacuated, the President standing on a pile of rubble with a megaphone.

I was in a unique time in my life, right on the edge of teenage and adulthood. I was old enough to comprehend it but I was young enough to not have any knowledge of our country being a place of anything other than peace, safety and prosperity. And in the 10 years since, my understanding of the world is so drastically changed. I come back again to that concept, it happened to all of us. It happened to me, and I cannot even really articulate was "it" is. 9/11 is not just a date, it not just an event, it is not just a tragedy. It is the day that my world, and your world, changed.