I remember where I was on 9/11. I was in French class, and the teacher had no idea how to lead us through what was happening for she was as innocent as we were in this regard. We watched the attacks unfold in front of us, together as one, some with tears and others with faces twisted in confusion. There was no talking... a feeling of confusion and fear swirled silently and coldly enveloped everyone in the room. I remember the day being unseasonably warm but goosebumps covered my body as people lost their lives and fires raged on in front of me. We weren’t just watching fire and smoke and strangers covered in dust, but we were witnessing families lose mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, and friends…you couldn’t help but submit to the visceral need to embrace the people next to you… I guess in a futile attempt to warm our skin. But our bodies weren’t cold, our spirits were.
US Airlines Flight 93 crashed about an hour from me and because of that the school was locked down. We were shuffled into the cafeteria, no longer teachers and students separated by age and station in life…but as equals…as a wounded whole. Some people there knew people in NYC or in the Pentagon, and I’ll never forget the twisted contortions of fear and panic on those people’s faces. We circled those people, in a sort of a football huddle, trying to use our bodies to shield them from the pain…like it was a palpable enemy that just needed to be stonewalled from its victims. Our arms overlapped, student and teacher, athletes and stoners, honors students and slackers.We united as one. Prayers were said from all different religions, and even an atheist like myself participated, for even if I don’t believe, who really knows. In that moment it didn’t matter, supporting each other was all that mattered.
Time has a funny way of existing during a tragedy. An hour can feel like decades and only seconds all at once. You feel weary and alert in the same consciousness. It was an odd feeling…watching the people on TV and somehow feeling their exhaustion but simultaneously feeling my body’s adrenaline and will to fight and protect coursing through my every cell.
Finally, at home, my mother and I watched the television for hours...days really. I couldn’t tell you what or if we ate. I couldn’t tell you what phone conversations we had or the commentary we grasped to like lifelines on TV, but I do remember exactly one question my mother asked me when we got home. She looked me in the eye, and she asked me, “Why are you crying?”
It was an unexpected question…raw and direct. “Why are you crying?” At the time, the question was like a jolt, and I took it a little offensively. I mean, wasn’t it obvious? But looking back, although I’m not sure why she asked (perhaps because she needed words for her own feelings), I’m glad she did. That question has allowed me to remember exactly why I was hurt…and that question alone, in the way it was and is so clearly seared in my memory, will allow me to recall 9/11 for the rest of my life.
It hurt me to see families destroyed so violently and abruptly. I watched the firefighters and police officers dying in service to others…for they were safe until they charged in to shield others. I imagined my grandfather, a military man, there helping people and losing his life in service to others because that’s the type of man he was. I watched the faces of known deceased mothers and fathers flash slowly and orderly across the screen, and I imagined losing my mother in the Twin Towers because she also worked in an office (and she worked hard as a single mother).
But I was also crying because of the amount of love that was swelling in my heart for those around me. It was such an intense feeling that I had to cry to make room for it. Now we weren’t them and us, we were only us. The pain allowed us to lift the blindfold that blocks us from seeing the humanity in everyone around us. In the days after 9/11, I felt an absolute mortal, visceral, rooted kinship with my fellow Americans that we have since lost. In those days and months that followed, we were family, now linked in the blood that was spilled on our own land…and we were ready to defend each other, regardless of color, background, or religion. Because above all, we were American and that means more than the rest of it. Sadly, shortly after the attacks, Muslims became target number one, and as the years have passed, the cracks that 9/11 temporarily healed began separated into even bigger chasms than before.
What have we become? What have I become? Why did it take so much death and blood and tragedy to realize we should be standing united? Was not all of the blood pooling on the ground red? We are letting the victims of 9/11 down, and we can’t let them down.
The pain changed us, but we let the monotony of everyday life dull our memory. Our once full hearts now have holes where our fellow Americans once lived post 9/11. We were one… something we are not today. Ironically, the pain from 9/11 healed our country, but we have relapsed… we have again grown ill and infected with hate.
We need to quit thinking in absolutes. Not all cops are bad. Not all blacks are criminals. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Stop looking for every tiny little thing to justify hating any group of people. Stop thinking of people as groups in the first place, think of them as individuals…and realize they are struggling through life just like you. We are making it too easy for the terrorists to finally see our country crumble… we shouldn’t be bleeding internally from self-inflicted wounds…
We should be remembering the pain, standing for our flag, linking our arms together, realizing we are the same, and that we all deserve love and opportunity… and we should make those sons of bitches called terrorists meet us head on for the fight of their life if they want to see our blood… don’t do the dirty work for them.
I am as guilty as the next person of making snap judgments and forgetting to show love and compassion to all of my fellow countrymen and women… but when I sat down to write today, I remembered. And I want you to remember. Then I cried and today I cried. So today I ask myself as my mother did before, “Why are you crying?” Just as before I am seeing violence ripping families apart and blood staining our streets on television almost nightly...and I can imagine losing family just as I did back on 9/11. So now I ask you, why are you crying? We need to heal, and I don’t want to wait for another 9/11 to do it…
