The year before, I dropped out of school, moved back in with my parents, and got a job at a video store, part of a local chain. My girlfriend of over three years left me, and with her went the last shred of my plans for the future. Although I had begun my second semester of classes at a local university, my heart was not in them. I knew my parents wanted to see me doing something, anything that looked like forward momentum, so I treated those classes as my “rent,” which didn’t inspire me enough to actually attend.
Dad had started working for a phonebook that had him on the road some days and at home others. That morning, he was home, so when I woke, I knew I had to stay quiet upstairs until he left. He might not realize I hadn’t gone to class if he didn’t notice me when until he got back. Eventually, though, biology insisted I pay a visit to the bathroom, so I crept down the hall as carefully as I could, trying to ease the weight of each step onto the floorboards of our old house.
It wasn’t quiet enough. He heard me, and called up from his office right away, but instead of yelling at me for skipping class, he shouted, “Turn on the television! America is under attack!”
“What?” My dad is prone to hyperbole, but there is always a grain of substance to his statements, and I couldn’t figure out what that could be.
“They flew a plane into the World Trade Center!”
They who? But the best way to find out what Dad meant was to investigate myself. I turned on the TV in my room and found the footage on every station that I could receive. I watched smoke pour from the first tower when the second plane struck.
For the next several hours, I did not move from that spot. The stations played that second strike over and over again from multiple angles.I watched people fleeing the building, with those in the upper floors falling to the death of their choosing. Then the top half shifted and began to fall. The news crews ran with all the rest down streets flooded by dust and ash. Arial footage showed smoke pouring out into the city, all the way out and over the water.
Dad never said anything about me missing class. Mom came home from teaching where her students had watched the news with her. Although we had all voted Democrat, she said she was comforted to know there was a Republican “hawk” in the White House to respond to this.
Conversations with friends carried commentary throughout the day. Talk of conspiracy or of this somehow being our own fault enraged me beyond the ability to communicate cordially. I kept flashing to images of what the passengers must have seen, of that flight attendant who had her throat slit with a box cutter–what a terrible way to die, gasping for air as blood floods down your chest; what a sight for those on board, shocking them into submission, hoping that by playing along they might be allowed to land safely and somehow get on with their lives. Whatever policy their elected officials had enacted to invite this invading outrage, these citizens did not deserve such punishment.
It’s been 10 years and two wars since. I’ve heard so much from so many sides attempting to make sense of that day. I’ve seen figures that say the deaths that followed among our own troops and foreign citizens dwarf those who died in the Twin Towers. I’ve known soldiers and protesters and respect the efforts of both, because each works towards the same goal–peace–even if within both ranks there exist those who strive via counter-productive means.
For me, these battles will only be fought on my television, transporting me from my own private dramas temporarily and reminding me that I exist as only a small thread of a greater social, national, and global tapestry; and because others fight for me, be it with rifle or rallying, I do not have to fight myself but may live within the grace of their sacrifices and think it unthinkable that true terror could visit me personally as it did my fellow civilians on September 11, 2001.
