Where were you when you first heard about or saw the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
I've recently told my family and friends that I don't have a ton of vivid memories from childhood. I haven't thought much of it - I've been blessed with an amazing life that has been relatively free from trauma, especially in my childhood, so I’m fairly certain my brain hasn’t purposely discarded those memories.
I’ve just chalked it up to having acquired so much knowledge over the years, that my brain had to make more space and trim the fat somewhere. Despite that, I will never forget being in Ms. Gasilberti’s fourth grade classroom on September 11, 2001 and being called for dismissal around 10:00 in the morning. I won’t forget the excitement that I felt as I packed up my bag, the jealousy on my classmates’ faces as I left school only an hour after I’d gotten there.
My older sister, just down the hallway in the fifth grade at the time, was scheduled to get her braces on today. I knew she was going to be leaving early, but what an exciting surprise that my mom decided to bring me along! I got to the front office first to find my mom, and I still remember how disappointed my sister was to see me there on her big day, how unfair she thought it was that I was also leaving school early.
When we walked outside, my mom let us know we wouldn’t be going to the orthodontist’s office that day. She told us something bad had happened - a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. I remember asking how an accident like that could have happened? Another memory I can’t shake - my mom responding, “It wasn’t an accident.”
My dad worked in downtown Manhattan at the time, right across from the twin towers. I don’t remember how long it took him to get home from work that day, and it isn’t something he likes to talk about. Several years prior, during the first attempt at bombing the World Trade Center in 1993, my father had worked in the World Trade Center. While that failed attempt resulted in the tragic death of six and injury of 1000+ individuals, my dad was physically unharmed and motivated to seek out a new job that took him out of those buildings.
I remember spending the rest of that day and evening confused and scared while my parents clung to the phone, panicked and distraught as the gravity of what had taken place began to sink in. Both of my parents grew up in Brooklyn and spent their careers in downtown Manhattan, so the list of people they knew who never made it home after 9/11 seemed endless. At nine years old, I couldn’t possibly understand the impact of what had happened that Tuesday morning. But as I look back now, nearly 20 years later, I understand that that was the day every American in my generation lost the remainder of our childhood innocence and came to understand that the world is not always a safe place. We experienced a collective trauma that’s hard to understand now, but even more so at nine years old. Your entire sense of security can collapse in one hour and 42 minutes on a beautiful, sunny, September day and suddenly, everything is different.
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