September 11, Remembrance on a Heavy day.
Today is September 11, and, especially for my readers in the United States, it is a day most of us can recall in exact detail: where we were, what we were doing, how life shifted.
I was in my dorm room getting ready for a 9 a.m. class when a teammate from home messaged me on AOL: “Turn on your TV right now!” I wrote back something like, “Why, who got in trouble?” He replied, “Just do it. Something is happening in New York.”
Our floor was mostly single rooms and hardly anyone had a TV, so I ran downstairs and begged a trio of my teammate to turn theirs on. One of the Twin Towers was burning. No one knew what was going on. My parents were 45 minutes or more away from The City, so I told myself it must be a bad fire and went to class.
My first class went on like normal. We had no smartphones, no Wi-Fi, no steady stream of updates. My second class was in the same room, so I stayed. Students came in whispering, worried. When the professor arrived, someone asked, “Do you know what is happening in New York?” He tried to brush it off. Another student said, “Please, can you look?”
He pulled up the New York Times on the projector. I can still see the image of the second Tower ablaze. The towers had fallen. He paused and said, “Class dismissed. Call your families, reach out to your loved ones. The world is about to change.”
I rushed back to my dorm to call my mom and could not get through. I listened to my voicemails: “Sweetie, New York has been attacked. We are okay, but the towers have fallen and communication is going to be bad. If you cannot get us, know we are okay.”
My next memory is the sound of a young woman wailing in her room. Later I learned she lost her father and her uncle that day. I can still hear her cries, the depth of that devastation.
The world did change. For a time, we held one another close. Political lines blurred. We looked for ways to help.
Twenty-four years later, I look around and see how divided we have become, how quickly we sort one another by politics, race, religion, orientation, and identity. Yesterday, a prominent conservative activist was killed at a public event, and families are grieving while the country argues over who to blame and what to fear. The finger pointing started immediately, and the pain is real. Reuters+1
Where do we go from here? How do we hold each other close again? How do we build community in a time when many do not feel safe to speak their truth for fear of the reaction?
Every Saturday my father joins a small, peaceful protest in a town nearby. Last week they were cursed at, mocked with lewd gestures, and told they were terrible Americans. This is the climate people are walking through to practice civic care. Every week I worry more that he is at risk.
I do not pretend to have all the answers, yet I know this much: hate breeds hate, and violence begets violence. We cannot control every headline, but we can choose how we show up for one another.
Here is where I am starting:
Learn what you are afraid of. Name it. Sit with it. Ask what it needs rather than blaming it on someone else.
Check on one person today. A text, a call, a quick note that says, “I am thinking of you.”
Protect one small boundary that guards your peace. Turn off the news for an hour, take a walk, pray, breathe.
Teach your children kindness. Let them see you listen. Let them see you help.
It is time to turn toward one another. To support more than we sort. To choose care over contempt. To build the kind of community that can hold grief and still make room for hope.
