I have a terrible memory, and I think it just gets worse with every day that passes. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten huge chunks of my life (like most of my childhood) that I'm just never going to get back.
Every September 11, I try hard to not think about what happened, and what it did to this country, because I have work to do and I have to focus, and I have a tendency to lose myself in thought about things like this. But I think I should write down my story because chances are, I really will forget someday. For now though, the memory is clear:
I was 22, and I was working as a receptionist and technical writer at an accounting firm in Alexandria. I was driving to work in my blue 1991 Mazda Protege, listening to the radio. I was running late. The Elliot in the Morning crew on DC101 was talking about the airplane that had flown into the North Tower a few minutes before. I was sitting in traffic on 395. The cast of the radio show was giving a running commentary, and then they broke the news about the South Tower. Suddenly, it wasn't an isolated incident, it wasn't an accident - it was a planned attack. Somebody was doing this on purpose.
I got into the office where the big screen TV in the conference room was showing the news coverage. We watched the towers burning and were horrified. I was at my desk when the building shook a little, and there was a boom. It didn't really register in my brain - I didn't think to look out the window. But I heard J's shout from the second office to my left, and then I turned around and looked. The wall behind me was nothing but windows, and I had a clear view of the column of black smoke rising from the Pentagon. And then the painfully loud jets that came down out of the sky - out of nowhere. They came down, they looked, they flew away. Then there were helicopters. And the realization that this was a planned attack on the United States. I'll never forget that feeling of helplessness and fear and wondering how many more there would be. I knew that the building I was in was not important, but it was one of the tallest in Alexandria, and it was too close to the sky for me at that point. We were on the top floor, and I wanted out.
But then the phone started to ring. Our firm did government audits, and most of our accountants were young - just a few years out of college. Several of them were at the Pentagon. Their mothers were calling and asking me for news about their children. Were they at the Pentagon? Did I know anything about their fate? Would I call them back if I heard anything? Their voices were shaky. I cried with them. Unheroically, I left the phones in the hands of my boss and went to the copy room to sit on the counter and cry for a few minutes. J was there - he was my boyfriend. He was leaving, and he wanted me to go with him. Eventually I did, when the phone calls slowed down because all the lines were tied up. I couldn't get in contact with my mom - the cell signals were all jammed. I tried calling the accountants that were at the Pentagon but had no luck. I got in my car and drove to J's house with my eyes half on the road and half on the empty sky. It was blue and beautiful. There was so much silence.
Our accountants turned out to all be fine. They were not in the section of the Pentagon that was hit. For some reason, I still feel guilt for not being able to tell their mothers that they were ok. Back at J's house, we watched the news for the rest of the afternoon and didn't talk. We watched the Towers coming down over and over and over again. Eventually I was able to call my mom, but by then there wasn't really anything to say.
Before that day, it was inconceivable to me that the US could successfully be attacked like that. I had gotten over my childhood fear of the Soviet Union, and completely bought the idea that we were safe and powerful and indestructible. After that day, there was a brief period when I felt some solidarity with the people of my country. And then my best friend, who is Afghan-American, started to suffer the fallout. Someone refused to get on the elevator with her because she was "a terrorist" and her mom received death threats. So my feeling of solidarity abruptly ended as the crap she and others had to cope with just kept going and going and going.
As for what it's done to us - you know... airport security lines and rules about liquids are not a big deal. Inconveniences like that are pretty trifling, but I sure do hear a lot of complaining about them. The real impact of 9/11, I think, has been to make us as a country even more bigoted than we already were. I hate to say that - I try really hard to find the good in people, and to believe that it is just a really loud minority who is so anti-Muslim and/or anti-anything-that-is-not-the-same-as-me. But sometimes the bigotry is overwhelming - like when a city official in Tennessee gets a bunch of flack because he has a Muslim woman on his staff. And when New York Muslims can't build a mosque at a location that would better serve their population because it would offend people who equate them with the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center. Because that's not offensive.
I don't know though - maybe I'm wrong. Like I said, I have a terrible memory. We've always struggled with accepting each other in this country, I know that. Maybe we are not really more bigoted - maybe the bigotry has just shifted focus. In a way, I hope that's not the case. I hope we were on our way to embracing our different backgrounds and have just suffered a bit of a setback. Because that would mean we are at least capable of accepting each other, and maybe even loving each other. Someday.
My favorite thing about the United States is its diversity. I know that parts of the country are not diverse in any sense, but I'm lucky enough to be from a place where I'm surrounded by people from all over the world. And earlier this year, as I was sitting at dinner with my American women friends in Saudi, I marveled at us - all of us Americans, all of us good friends. These women were born in Ecuador, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Great Britain, Kazakhstan, and probably others. Texas, even! And we are all of us Americans, and to me, that's the American Dream come true. It is what I love about this country! It makes me so sad that it's what some people hate about this country.
I am always interested to hear about other peoples' experiences of that day - where you were, what you saw or thought or felt. How you think we've done as a country since then. Share if you want to!
