Never forgetting a day I can’t remember.
It seems like everyone has a 9/11 story. Memories from that day aren’t discussed to get attention or to gain clicks on an article, but instead because they are impossible not to tell. They’re locked deep in minds and can’t be thrown out or forgotten, so they must be shared. They’re a point of relation, a commonality among a nation of different opinions.
My dad was in a meeting on the Monday morning up September 11, 2001 when his conference call got interrupted. My brother was in 2nd grade, sitting on one of those USA map rugs, when his teacher rushed out of the room crying. My fifth grade teacher was driving to a class at the start of his senior year of college when the radio relayed the news to him.
When it comes to me, I can’t remember anything. I was a 3-year-old living in a Philadelphia suburb with zero understanding that there was a world in terror around me. In a way, I’ve adopted my mother’s memory of that day because she was with me and I can easily picture it. She told me it was a sunny and warm fall morning, she dropped me off at preschool and then had to come back to pick me up.
Over the years, I’ve heard friends my age and a little older relay that they have some small memory of it. Maybe some sensory perception that there was sadness around them, maybe the distant audio of someone yelling in shock. I want to tell them I remember too. In my mind I can see my mom picking me up from preschool and I can smell the Paoli fall air, but I know it’s a mirage. My mind is blank.
It’s an odd middle-ground feeling to know that an event this significant is one that happened while you were alive (meaning it is not solely a history textbook understanding), yet not one you can feel completely emotionally attached to in the same way everyone older than you does. I should add this feeling is preferable, in my opinion, to having been conscious and emotionally impacted for September 11, 2001.
In his commencement speech to Harvard’s 2020 graduating class (a group that definitely does not include the UMD alum writing this), Conan O’Brien remarked on the 9/11 experience for those my age in a way I had never thought about it.
“You came into consciousness while our nation was still smoldering from that attack and you’ve only known a world beset by terrorist hate,” O’Brien said.
That makes me sad. As does the hate that resulted from the other side of it — waves of Islamophobia and general prejudice that still influence government policy and public thought.
I’m thankful that my “never forget” pledge doesn’t include the addition of a name of a family member or a close friend who passed away that day — for so many that is unfortunately not the case. It does come with additional pledges though — to never forget the resiliency of a city and country, to never forget the unity that some promoted, to never forget the hate that others promoted, to never forget the value of one single life. And while I do not and never will remember that day, I can still remember the lessons learned from it.
