Metal and stone

The theme yesterday on the 10th anniversary of 9/11/01 seemed to be, "Where were you?" and, "How has your life changed as a result?"

Well, at the risk of being boring and redundant, I'm going to spend a few minutes reflecting.

9/11 wasn't just a tragic event. It is my generation's Pearl Harbor, Kennedy assassination. It was the moment of a young life that will forever be etched into one's mind. It will be the marker by which a life is measured: before the Twin Towers fell and after.

Before I never had a reason to feel anything but secure in a country that boasted bravery and freedom. Battles that spilled blood onto American soil were left to the history texts; things like that didn't happen in our world. In our safe, modern, free world.

Until an airplane struck a tower of metal and stone in a city so far away yet too near to my tiny Midwestern town. I, like most everybody, heard about the first impact and thought, "How does someone crash into a skyscraper?" It never entered my mind that someone would do it on purpose. Until the second plane hit. And then the third. And then the fourth one went down in a field outside of a town smaller than my own.

I was in class when another faculty member rushed in and told us to turn on the tv, then left immediately to tell the next class. But after the first impact, there seemed to exist and unspoken agreement between the teachers and the students. The class material was irrelevant. The television in each classroom stayed on. The classes without tvs poured into rooms that had them. Few spoke. The halls were as silent as they are in the dead of night, when no one is around to hear the creaking of the old lockers. Faculty, staff, and students watched in rapt attention and horror as a plane struck the second tower, and still when the pillars that guarded New York's skyline fell crumbling, reminding us that our mark on this Earth will never be as permanent as we think it will be.

Would it be so unreasonable to believe that until that day, I'd never even heard of the World Trade Center? I knew nothing about it. Back in a town entrenched on the Mississippi River, things that happened in New York City were foreign and exotic. As a 16-year-old girl, my life seemed filled with my own immediate surroundings.

Classes got out early, parents in a panic to pick up their children and get them home. Home, into more buildings made of stone and metal that no longer felt as safe as they always had. Dinner was eaten in front of the tv that night. Whatever was in the house that could be made into a sandwich was, and we watched as the country tried to make sense of what had happened. Tried to understand that there were people in this world who would kill mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and friends because they didn't like the way those people lived their lives. Because they had been born on a particular piece of earth.

Before 9/11/01 my world was very small. After, my world became too big. Things like "terrorist alert levels" became common in news broadcasts. Grief struck so many, but remained alien to me, a young girl who didn't understand.  I could no longer believe that the American Dream was something that everybody wanted, but had to realize it was also something that some wanted to destroy. That were people in this world who had a capacity for the kind of evil and hatred that kills innocent men, women, and children.

I knew nobody in the Twin Towers that day. I'm not even sure if I knew anyone who lived in New York at that time. But my world shifted, just like everybody else. As a child, it was the moment when I had to confront the real world. It was thrust into my consciousness by crumbling steel and concrete.

We all watched in horror that day. The horror still feels fresh today. I hope that there will not be a day when those of us who were watching will become numb to the tragedy of what occurred. Because that will mean that we have started to forget. To forget what it felt like to watch people just like us--who got up in the morning, went to school or work, and never knew they wouldn't come home again--forget what it felt like to watch their lives stolen. The absolute, astonishing horror of watching life being extinguished on live television, as we stood by helplessly.

I will not pretend to know what those families live through every day. 9/11 happened to all of us, but it mostly happened to them. It happened to someone whose life was probably exactly like my own, only in a different place. All because she happened to be born on a particular piece of earth.

It will always be a defining moment in my life because it didn't happen to me, but it did happen to me, too, and I will never forget.