A decade later

There are a couple of new people in my PhD program, and I was talking to one of them the other day.  In 2001 he lived in New York, on the lower West side.  We compared notes about 9/11 and found that many of our opinions and memories were similar.  It was unspeakably tragic, yet it managed to unite a city that seemed forever fragmented.

Ten years ago I lived in Framingham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.  We were 18 miles from Logan Airport, where the planes departed.  That morning, I got the older kids on their bus and then drove my youngest to his school.  When I got back, I flipped on the TV and started making breakfast for myself.  The news showed the second plane as it headed for the towers and then crashed.

I watched the news for hour after hour, afraid to look away, unable to think about anything else.  I was so close to New York, yet the news was delivered via the same device that also delivered Star Trek and Monty Python.  It seemed impossible that this could be real.  It was too horrible to be believed fully.

My twin sons were in the fourth grade, and the next day one of them came home from school and told me that his teacher had asked the class to raise their hands if they had a friend or family member who was on one of the planes.  In a class of twenty-three children, nine raised their hands.

A few months later, we had a chance to go to New York and see the church where the firefighters and construction workers still trudged in and out.  The fence around it still had pictures of missing loved ones, along with impromptu memorials, teddy bears, flowers, and strings of paper cranes.  It was a living monument to a people who tenaciously continued to live despite tragedy.  It made me heartsick and proud at the same time.

I travel as often as I can, and it sometimes feels like the people in airports, hotels, and stadiums only remember 9/11 in terms of waiting in line to go through security checks.  I've been to the site.  I've flown from Logan Airport many times.  I've comforted weeping children and friends as they struggled to cope with death.  I make sure to thank security guards whenever I get a chance, especially if they look tired and discouraged.  I appreciate the effort they take to make sure I never have to live through something like that again.

Above all, I'm especially grateful to be one of the ones who lived.