For many years of her life (by which I mean 29), my mom's birthday was never a problem. In fact, having "911" for your birthday was kind of her bit. She used to joke that no one ever had an excuse for forgetting her birthday, because it was on every fire truck. Lucky people! Not to mention the fact that people had a chance to remember her every time they saw a cute firefighter. It was a cute little joke (told by an obvious fan of fire fighters) and even though I heard it a million times growing up, it always got my mom a laugh.
But on September 11, 2001 the joke stopped being cute and everyone stopped laughing.
September 11th. It's my generation's "Where were you when?" moment. We ask "Where were you when you heard about 9/11" much like our parent's generation asked "Where were you when you heard that JFK was shot?' I, like most people, remember exactly where I was, what I was doing, and that strange, aimless, disoriented feeling that, days later, no one could quite shake. I remember every surreal minute of it.
That morning, like most mornings of days that go horribly wrong, began perfectly normally. I had gone into my mom's room to wish her a happy birthday, worried about how she was handling it (I'll just say it was a milestone birthday and leave it at that). I sat down on her bed mentally preparing my pep talk, as my mom turned on the news. For as long as I can remember, my mom has always watched the local news in the morning (I come by my news anchor obsession honestly). Our local news anchor was talking about something innocuous when she suddenly fell silent and turned a few shades lighter. The local news immediately cut to National, and my mom and I abandoned our talk to watch. At first, the reports were nothing but chaos. No one knew what had happened exactly, but they were guessing there was some kind of explosion in the tower and the building was on fire (I would remember this exact moment the day of the Boston Bombings, when everyone knew that something had happened and it was bad, but we couldn't fathom just how bad yet). As we watched, the second plane crashed into the tower. I remember that whoever was reporting at the time started screaming and that was when I realized that this was huge. I was in a journalism and communications class at the time and as (weird, crazy, ironic) luck would have it, that morning I was still trying to cram for a quiz that day on journalistic integrity, objectivity, and how important it is to maintain your cool at all times, particularly during a live broadcast. I had no way of knowing at the time but I shouldn't have wasted my time studying; We never wound up taking that quiz. Instead, my shell-shocked, rather shaky-looking teacher (a first year, he was only five years older than me and no doubt monumentally freaked out, maybe even more so than all of us) sent us home. I remember getting gas later that night and instead of the usual, noisy gas station bustle, everyone was silent, just listening to the news on their radios. Dan Rather's voice was echoing off the pumps as everyone listened in stunned silence, gas pumps hanging limply from their hands. It was like a scene from a movie, that eerie silence right before the storm hits or the world ends. I'll never forget that feeling.
It was twelve years ago, but the memory is so clear, so vivid that it could have happened yesterday. It was all so violent, so tragic, so unnecessary, so unfathomable. I was only seventeen, but 9/11 was my wake up call to the fact that a big, scary world lay beyond my sheltered existence.
But I believe that there's a silver lining.
I remember the days right after 9/11, before the conspiracy theories, the Patriot Acts, the finger-pointing or blaming started to pour in, when the atmosphere was indescribable. Everyone was paying attention to everything going on around them, everyone was engaged. People were hanging up flags and talking to strangers. We were all united in sorrow; We were grieving but we were doing it together, and we buzzed with our mutual sympathy and comradery. It felt like taking a glimpse at what the world would look like if everyone dropped their agendas, politics, prejudices, ill-conceived perceptions and down-right snobbishness and just focused on acting like decent human beings. And you know what? That world was awesome. For a moment, our values synched up and we gained a whole new appreciation for strong, brave people. We appreciated things like the will and steel nerves of the first responders who went rushing into hell trying to save people. We stopped taking police, firefighters, and the military for granted and appreciated what they all go through to protect and serve. No one cared who they voted for in the 2000 election, where they stood on abortion, or how much money they made. We cared about the content of people's characters instead of just surface-level facts and sound bytes of their opinions. "United We Stand" became our motto not just because it sounded nice and patriotic, but because everyone actually felt that way. I can honestly say that in the midst of so much sadness and chaos, I've never been prouder to a part of this country, that we were all in this fight together. The United States became one big family bonded in grief and for one fleeting moment, it made us all a little better. As I sit here now, a dozen years later, I'm reminded of an article I read once, about how calamity and tragedy helps people focus, realize what's important to them and to try, however briefly, to be a better version of themselves. The world was bursting with those people in the days after 9/11, people who wanted to do anything they could to help, from passing out fliers to giving blood. It was humanity at its best. It was the beauty in the breakdown.
Every year, I think that we should honor the victims and families of 9/11. But I've never been able to figure out how. Whenever I think about it, I always come back to that post 9/11 feeling of being a united front, feeling like we were all in this mess together, and I wish we could figure out a way to get back to feeling that way. I realize that the world is not meant to be perfect, there will always be adversity, violence, war, and a million other terrible things. But honestly, we can do a little better than this. Those days right after 9/11 gave me hope. Maybe someday the good in the world will outweigh the bad, or at the very least, we'll appreciate the little but important things in life instead of taking them for granted. Maybe if we want to really honor the people who lost their lives, we could try being kinder, more patient, more tolerant people without needing a gut-wrenching tragedy to be our motivator. Maybe it's just the left wing, tree-huger in me, but I think we could all get the point eventually where no one cares what wing I am or what I hug, because at the end of the day, none of that stuff really matters. We're all in this together. Solidarity! Call me unrealistic or naive, but I'm not going to give up hope that it could happen.
We really could be the change we want to see in the world. We have the potential.
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| "On September 11, 2001 there was one American in space. This is the photo he took from the International Space Station" VIA Twitter.com/SciencePorn. |
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