I had no more a connection
to the attacks than the next person; I didn’t know anyone who died personally.
I had been to the Twin Towers just once, and it had already become a memory
that existed simply because people told me I had done it. None of that matters,
of course. The point was to hurt us all. And it did hurt me.
Life can be now divided for so many of us into before and
after. So much of the ramifications permeate our daily lives that it’s hard to
remember the before.
It was my junior year in Wilmington. I was the last one to
leave that day. I was standing in the kitchen of our house on Chestnut Street,
watching Good Morning America while I ate a bowl of cereal before class. The
sky in New York was so blue. Charlie Gibson
reported that there had been an accident, that a plane had crashed into the
twin towers. It was all so innocent. There was not anxiety, no pretense. Just reporting
a weird occurrence. The pilot must have had a heart attack. The plane
malfunctioned. They cut to the Towers about
30 seconds before the second plane hit. I
dropped my spoon and it bounced on the floor as the anchors came to the
realization that we were under attack.
I spent the next week on the couch, obsessing over the
coverage. Calling everyone I know to
tell them I love them. Wondering how
this could happen. How could people hate so much? We were all a little hardened
that day. In the after, life is less
innocent.
14 years since 9/11 and I can’t really talk about it without
crying. As I type these words, my eyes have welled up with tears. It’s a different
world, the after.
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