9[11: The Importance of Remembering

I recently had a disturbing conversation with a teenage girl about the events of September 11, 2001. She said she remembered some of it (she was 7 at the time), but that it didn't make much of a difference in her life and, in fact, she didn't really care about it. It was at this point that I started to sound a lot like my grandmother recalling Pearl Harbor. I told her about my own memories - of my mother waking me up to tell me to turn on the television just in time to see the second plate hit the World Trade Center; driving to a local store to buy the last newspaper on the stand (it had only been published an hour before); of sitting in traffic on that abnormally hot day with my windows rolled down, listening to the sound of Tom Brokaw broadcasting from all of the other cars around me with their windows open. I recalled looking through a box in my dining room (I don't remember what I was looking for) and realizing that it was the first time I had ever understood what people meant when they said something felt like a dream.

She sat and listened intently, which she doesn't normally do, so I can only assume it stunned her how much I remembered, and how much it impacted me. What you don't realize when you are seven years old is how much your world is changing around you, at an alarmingly rapid speed, never to go back to the way it was. Kids get over things. What was bothering them one minute is soon forgotten by playing with friends or swinging on the swing set in the backyard. I can understand it not jolting her world like it jolted me. I was a 22-year-old newlywed. She was a little girl, most likely being sheltered from the images by well-meaning adults.

But to not care? That is where I stop understanding her. Thousands of people were going about their lives that day, minding their own business. They were parents, siblings, aunts and uncles. Some of their lives were cut short while they were pouring their morning coffee. Some of them dangled from their 90th story windows having to decide whether it would be better to burn alive or jump to their deaths. While most bystanders were fleeing, fire and police officials were running into the carnage to save those who stood a chance... and many of them died in the process. How can you not care about that?

2001 had been a boring summer. I worked the night shift at a group home and I spent most of my days watching coverage of the Chandra Levy case. In the blink of an eye, the whole world changed. Terrorism used to be something that only happened in the Middle East. We believed we were sheltered from it. We pooh-poohed those who tried to warn us of the impending doom. We never dreamed an airplane could be hijacked in this country. We became afraid - of stadiums, shopping malls, parking garages, and of course sky scrapers. For a (very) brief moment in time, we came together and stopped bickering about politics and we were united in grief and determination to overcome what had been done to us.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

Eventually, the smoke cleared - literally - and our unity fell into disarray politics become more volatile than ever before. These are the things I remember. I still mourn September 10, 2001, before everything changed. There was a time when I was sheltered myself, nearly oblivious to the worst of the worst evils mankind could dish out. I lost what was left of my innocence on 9/11. I don't walk around in fear anymore, but the topic of terrorism is never very far away.

And I am sad not only that some people don't give a damn, but that they will never really remember life before 9/11. It was nice. It was peaceful. It is now history. Pin It