As I am getting older, I have a small collection of memories that are seared in my mind like a scar. One is September 11, 2001. I was in my 9th-grade Latin class, and I had a sudden and overwhelming sense that something was about to change forever — a feeling I probably would’ve forgotten if, just a half hour later, I hadn’t walked into my next class and someone told the teacher we needed to turn on the TV to see what was happening. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. As we watched, another plane flew into the second tower. The TV anchors scrambled to make sense of what we were seeing, as all of us, stunned and confused, watched the two towers collapse.
I will always remember where I was that day. I think most people who were old enough to have memory do. And yet, the events of 9/11 are so much more than any one individual’s story. It’s more than the people whose lives were cut short that day. It’s more than the terrorists. It’s more than the long and costly wars that followed.
As I age, and 9/11 becomes more an historic event than a recent one, I’m grateful for the September 11th series Sarah and Beth put together a few years back. It broadened my perspective, reminds me of what it is we should remember about that day, and helps me grieve. We lost 3,000 American lives that day, and so much more that remains unquantifiable.
I’m grateful for the care and thought of the 9/11 Memorial.
Charles Fishman closes his book The Big Thirst, with a reflection on the 9/11 Memorial that I think about often:
One of the mysterious and appealing qualities of water is that water itself inspires optimism.
Among the other events of 2011, September 11 was the ten-year anniversary of the Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. that brought down the World Trade Center towers. At Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, the memorial to the victims of the attacks was formally unveiled. The exact footprints of each of the skyscrapers have been preserved, but the buildings have been replaced with flowing water.
Where the towers once stood are now two perfectly square open holes in the ground. The sides of each hole are quiet, elegant waterfalls, each 176 feet long — so the square footprint of each tower has been transformed from a soaring monument of concrete and glass into curtains of shimmering water falling into a black reflecting pool 30 feet below ground level.
The substance chosen to commemorate the most shocking attack on civilians in U.S. history is water. Water, which calms and soothes, which inspires reflection and reverie. Flowing water, which cleanses both body and soul.
The waterfalls replacing the World Trade Center, glittering in the sunlight, offer solace, but also quietly insist on renewal. Water, providing unquenchable optimism even at a place of national tragedy.
To use a tired phrase, now more than ever, I think about the way 9/11 broke us. Whether it was our trust in the system, our feeling of certainty, our men and women in uniform who left so much behind on battlefields around the world in the name of a War on Terror. I’m grateful for writers like Jennifer Senior putting those stories into words:
What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind: Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11 by Jennifer Senior
I think it goes without saying that we are at another turning point in our history as a country. I hope that, as Americans, we take time to reflect today about who we want to be in the face of tragedy, uncertainty, and enormous pain, and find the strength to choose a better way.
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This is lovely, Maggie. As a long-time NYC resident who moved here after 2001, it has sometimes been hard to reconcile what I experienced outside the city with what still lingers here. I've never been thrust into more of a listening mode than when talking about 9/11 with a New Yorker who lived through it. Tonight, as usual, I will run along the waterfront and watch as the lights go on and think about what it all means.
9/11 is a hard day for our family as we lost a family friend. I was 25 and was in a grocery store in the Midwest, having woken early after a 3p-3a swing shift in the ER. I was in the deli/produce department when the first tower was hit. I’ll never forget it.
I grew up as a late GenX (1976) so vividly remember the challenger explosion, and Desert Storm on TV. I also appreciate that social media was not really common then. No facebook, YouTube, etc. It would have made a terrible day worse.
We lost a friend at the Pentagon. It was terrible but would have been so much worse if we had to listen to rhetoric 24/7 online or cable “news”. I think that’s why we came together as a country. There was more trust. More actual community. The older I get-and perhaps more crusty and jaded-the more I really believe our brains, hearts and souls cannot take constant influx of sensory information.