It's hard to believe that it's both already been and only been seven years since the above image dominated not only the airways but, well, most everything.
The image has signified so much since then: a reason to bind ourselves closer together as families and a nation, to be grateful for every day we have, to be kind and generous with our fellow human beings. But also as a reason to be small, closed, and pettily nationalistic and later as a motivating force and justification behind a two-front war, necessary in one place and heartbreakingly wrong in the other, both executed in troubling ways that I predict will continue to trouble us in some way for the rest of my time in this post-9/11 world.
I worry though that this signifier--this image--has been emptied out, left hollow, with so many competing forces vying for its power. And it feels important to affix some concrete meaning to it, to remember it for what it was, not for what it did and might stand for.
And the best way I know to do that is to remember that day emotionally, to remember this image before it meant anything other than 2,973 human souls gone from this earth in a few instants.
So here is what I remember of that day:
I remember walking into my 8am political theory class in BYU's Maeser Building to be instantly dismissed by Professor Bohn, who told us that the World Trade Center towers had been hit by planes and to go watch the news. His tone was grave. We silently walked out of the classroom. I woke Josh up with my phone call bearing the bad news.
I remember making my way across campus and it feeling surreal to see people chatting and laughing, knowing that what seemed like a normal Tuesday now would in a few minutes become a day they would never forget.
I remember sitting in my dad's faculty lounge in the old JKHB with a Spanish professor, feeling shock and horror when the second tower collapsed.
I remember watching the news for hours, feeling numb.
I remember crying a lot.
I remember hugging the people I loved a lot.
I remember holding Josh close while we watched the Church's memorial service that night and feeling some degree of peace.
What do you remember?
4 comments:
I remember getting breakfast and listening to NPR. I was also getting Jesse ready to go up to his school at Sundance. I heard the reporter say that a small airplane had hit one of the World Trader Center towers. I thought "wow" and 'oh no'. The reporter didn't seem to have much info. I told Jeff. Pretty soon more news made it more significant and we went downstairs to watch TV. We only say the first plane hit. Jesse saw it too. Then I had to take him to school. Apparently while there, he and another little boy drew pictures of a plane hitting a tower and one of the teachers didn't like it. Of course he didn't understand the depth of what had happened and was just drawing what he saw. Kids aren't always pc. I never saw more images than that first morning, because I didn't watch any more tv.
I was actually having one of the most peaceful experiences of my life when that happened. Growing up I was too cool for baptisms for the dead. That morning I was in the temple doing that for the first time with my sister and a friend. It was so peaceful there, and then we got out and the world was everything else but peaceful. I was also set apart as a missionary that night, so there were a lot of mixed feelings. But that's really all I got to hear about it was what was said that first day.
I remember sleeping in that day, because it was the only day I didn't have early class, and my best friend Bob called me and said, "Turn on the TV. Now." And so I walked into the kitchen of my apartment in Heritage Halls and turned on the TV and started crying. I remember later in class that day, my intensive writing teacher asked us to just leave class and go write in our journals. I remember being terrified that all the guys I knew were going to leave for war rather than for their missions. I was paralyzed with fear for my uncle, who does a lot of business in the WTC. Mostly, I just remember being in shock and feeling like it was the end of the world, and being so homesick for my family--I'd only been at college for two or three weeks and I felt very alone and scared.
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