Named by it's date, it's our generation's national horror story. All through history the world has had them. Eve endured the sadness of her first son carrying on the family legacy; Noah's family endured the deluge; the Black Plague; Mongol hoards; Burning of Catholics then Protestants back and forth for a century; World War 1, the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, the deaths of the Kennedys and now 9-11. We all remember where we were when we heard the news and we sat transfixed in front of the TV unable to look away.
We had just moved into our new home in Willow Grove. Baby Brianna and I were the only ones home and I had taken her to nursery school. A friend called and I couldn't understand what she was saying, she was crying so hard. She made me understand to turn on my TV, America was under attack! I ran to look and got there just in time for the second plane plowing into the tower. My mind covered up what I couldn't believe. A plane - flew into a skyscraper - full of people - and it wasn't an accident. Nah, of course it was an accident. Some poor pilot got way out of control.
Except it wasn't. It really was an intentional act of foreign mad men. I drove frantically to the daycare to get Brianna. I called my family who were out on the road and couldn't come home. I was sure, like the rest of America, that this was war and we were going to die today. I wanted to die with my family around me. But it was not possible for them to get home and so I watched, tears pouring down my face, horrified, all day, with Brianna sitting in her playpen, burbling and playing, in her innocence, not knowing what life changing event was unfolding before our eyes. I don't make fun of George Bush's expression when the secret service man walked into that classroom and whispered in his ear. I felt the same way he did. You can't take it in.
She's twelve now and studies history in school. Yes, the kids think 9-11 is terrible. But they can't possibly understand the real horror behind the story. My husband is a Civil War buff. It's his hobby to read about the battles and go to re-enactments. But for those men, it was hell come to life. I read about Pearl Harbor and watched the movie with Ben Affleck but I'm not as moved as was my father in law who lived through it. I'm interested in World War 2 from a historical viewpoint and it does horrify me, but not like it did my parents, or my uncle who was an army private who liberated one of the death camps or my friend Mary who missed being gassed by days. I'm sure the people of the seventeenth century looked back with unbelief at the burnings of religious people who didn't fit the current mold but went on with life where all could worship as they wished.
I know that the real gut wrenching, visceral reaction to 9-11 will fade with each year that passes. I know it will still make future generations shake their heads, not believing that terrorists were allowed to get that close. I know people will specialize in this era in history and play it out over and over like a Civil War enactment.
But for today, for us, it's good to feel the horror and to watch the pictures. It's good to have remembrance services and make the kids sit through lessons or videos. As has been said of World War 2, "Never forget, never forget."
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