It has been seventeen years since the events of September 11, 2001. I have spent over half of my life on the other side of that day. I’m now beginning to come to grips with all that’s changed.
I was one month away from my sixteenth birthday. I had never heard the term millennial, much less applied it to myself. I was three years away from college and five years away from studying abroad in England. I was treading water with an undiagnosed, and therefore untreated, anxiety disorder. I had no laptop or cell phone of my own, so I would occasionally use my parents’ ancient brick-shaped phones, such that might be seen in any episode of The X-Files. My sister and I whiled away the summer hours with an audio cassette recorder. Facebook had not yet been invented. The internet was a tool we used in school for researching papers or the infernal thing that hogged the phone line. George W. Bush was in the first year of his presidency, and it was less than two years removed from Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. Columbine, too, was a recent, troubling and soon to be recurrent nightmare.
It’s difficult to look back on that part of my life because I was a teenager, awkward and ignorant (not that I knew it 😉) to the extreme. I was still waking up as a person. Looking back at 9/11 means looking back on the still-forming person I was, the things I thought were crucial, important to life, the lessons I had not yet learned. An inner-city high school exploding with hundreds of kids, their problems and their adolescent growing pains is a battleground without the country being plunged into a national crisis.
The first I heard about the attack was on the track walking laps for gym class. Two girls who usually spent their time taunting me were several steps ahead talking about a bombing. I heard the phrase “trade center;” then dismissively, “Maybe they didn’t like what they were trading.” My awareness of the situation grew through each period: New York City, hijacked planes, fire, people jumping out of buildings, Pentagon, Pennsylvania, all flights grounded, President Bush on his way to Offutt. Some teachers turned on the television. Others proceeded with lessons as usual, although I’m sure no one was paying attention. The student body was hoping, as always, school would be cancelled.
This was my generation’s Kennedy moment. At this point there was no way of knowing if other cities would be targeted by terrorists, or what the hell was happening. Because Offutt Airforce Base (and Strat-Com) is just outside of Omaha, we knew there was a risk to us. Slight but still potent. The fact that the president was the only one in a plane and literally flying right over our heads, was comforting. We ran out on the front porch and watched Air Force One begin its descent. We went inside and watched the news: the footage of the towers coming down in a cloud of dust rivalled only by Vesuvius, the missing posters plastered to fences and walls, the mass exodus of people from Manhattan. The missing, my God, the missing.
It didn’t matter that I’d never been to New York or Washington D.C. It nonetheless felt personal. It is still personal.
Seventeen years ago, the country united over shared grief, and for a moment we remembered what it meant to be Americans. What it meant to serve and to sacrifice for the country’s ideals of freedom and equality not because they were soldiers but human beings. Americans went up into the towers of the World Trade Center as it was falling. Americans overtook hijackers and crashed their plane into a field to save lives. Americans towed refugees from Manhattan to safety in their tugboats. Americans sifted through the burning rubble. For one moment, we remembered that we had a common identity, members of the same ideological family no matter what we looked like or where we came from. We were devastated, angry, stunned, but we were on the same page.
It didn’t last long.
The next few years would see the country into war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Amidst the stress of AP classes, the turbulence and loneliness of adolescence, and the anticipation of college, there were worries that they would reinstate the draft. Were we looking at another Vietnam? And if, they reinstated the draft, would women be included? It was a new and scary era, uncharted territory; anything seemed possible. The fear was real. Pride for country could not completely push it away. The fear has faded into routines of inconvenience, background noise, but it is still there. The fact that we are still fighting in the Middle East is chilling.
By the summer of 2006, 9/11 was not the dominant thread in the fabric of my life, but it was inextricable. I had friends flying home from England who had to endure a “no carry-on” rule due to increased risk of terrorist activity. I was preparing to go to England myself, and what began as the normal anticipation of a stressful journey became all-out dread. I endured the TSA take-off-your-shoes ritual, a nine-hour flight (complete with a screaming baby in the seat next to me), severe jet lag and unexpected culture shock, but not so much as a hint of terrorist danger. I still dread walking through airport security in my bare feet.
The world today is more paranoid and polarized than the world I grew up in. The skin of our nation has been peeling away in places like old paint – in the White House, in Senate hearings to vet a Supreme Court nominee, at the border, in school shootings, from #MeToo to #BlackLivesMatter – to show us that some of our oldest cancers are still lurking. These are not little things. They are not frivolous things. These are human things. People are not getting angry for no reason. They are citizens exercising their rights, their power, their freedom.
Greed is still the unspoken rule in government, and party loyalty continues to take priority over following the Constitution, leaning us closer and closer to the very tyranny the founding fathers sought to prevent. The funeral of Senator John McCain this month was a powerful reminder of American sacrifice, service and a portrait of patriotism. It brought us back to a moment of unity. I’m sad that it took a funeral to do it. I’m sad it was fleeting. But it was comforting, heartening, empowering. There is still hope.
I am a millennial. I graduated the year of the recession. I do not live on my parents’ couch. I am a single woman in a world crowded with loud men. I am awake – wide awake and horrified – to the degradation of American values, to the attacks on the Press, to the amount of trash poisoning our oceans, to the dangers of Brexit. Name it, and I’m worried about it. I understand the importance of being informed of national and global affairs, deciding the worth of that knowledge, and making an informed vote in elections. I am in my thirties. I am a writer. I am a Christian. I am a citizen. September 11, 2001 was where my citizenship truly began.
I’m not always optimistic. These last two years have weighed heavily on me. I often feel helpless. What helps me make sense of the world and my place in it is putting my thoughts into words. Sometimes that takes a fair amount of wrangling, hair-pulling and procrastination. But if I’m brave and patient, the truth emerges and changes me. This is why I write.
I know this for certain: we are connected through suffering. We must not forget that we are all human beings with vital lives and vastly different opinions. But human beings nonetheless. Let’s start there. These turbulent years have shown us just how hard it is to stay the course, to be kind, to listen, to learn. That doesn’t mean we quit.
It’s never too late to pass on courage to our fellow beings. It’s a lovely thing.
