Six Years

[teaberryblue]

I don't think I've ever posted a remembrance, and because six years isn't a day one remembers-- I only see one other post in my LJ-- thanks, strangealchemy-- I feel like it's the right time.

ETA: It is also, and I was thinking about this a few days ago, the first Tuesday, 9/11, since the Tuesday, 9/11

Comments

[mel06]

I had a similar It's-Not-Such-A-Big-Deal when I found out about it, since it was five something in the morning in my timezone and all I cared about was getting to practice on-time, but when the whole of my second period class was spent watching CNN, I knew something was really, really wrong. The teacher for that class said some similar words to your father's and they're all I can think of every anniversary: "History is not found in books, it's found in the thoughts and memories of the people sitting in this room. You have a privileged view of what 100 years from now people may call the saddest day of the 21st century". I wrote it in my class notes, and then in my yearbook, and now it lives as a private post in LJ.

[teaberryblue]

What your teacher said is exactly the reason why I've meant to write about what happened to me that day, but never got around to it till now. Because being an ordinary New Yorker watching as my city went from a beautiful autumn morning to a warzone in the course of a little over an hour is something that is more important than any political hogwash that people try to wrap this day up in. It's going to be more important to our kids. I want future generations to know that in the moments when it happened, it wasn't political. It was sad and terrible.

I saw the movie of World Trade Center last year when it came out, and there were so many moments in it that really evoked what it was like to be in New York City that day. They even used the radio reports from before the first plane hit. Hearing the same radio announcers I had heard that morning, talking about the same things they had been talking about before it happened, was one of those moments when watching a movie really gave me chills.

[skirmish_of_wit]

I was asleep and my roommate woke me up when the plane hit the first tower. We were glued to the TV -- neither of us at that time knew anybody in New York, but it was still horrifying. We gathered with all of our friends and watched every news channel we could all day.

That night, I'll never forget -- there was a man standing in the park playing the saddest rendition of "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes.

[teaberryblue]

It's those little tiny details that are the ones that stick with you forever after.

I remember a woman stopping me on the escalator a couple days later and just saying hello, how are you? Just a stranger. Because she knew people needed it. Not just me, not me as an individual, because she didn't know me. She knew we all did.

[teaberryblue]

I would really like to discuss your last point, but about halfway through writing the comment, I realized that I don't want to do it on this post, because it's going to become too political in nature and I don't want to color this post with my own personal political views because it skews the original intent of what I was writing.

I think for most New Yorkers-- at least most that I know, the events didn't take on a political cast for weeks afterward. They only became political when the politicians came in. It was simply tragic. I don't think it's possible to feel all "America, fuck yeah," when there's a giant hole full of smoke and dead people a few blocks away.

[teaberryblue]

Okay, sweet. I think I lost my original comment but if I have time to rewrite it, I definitely will.

[spiralstairs]

I think it's become "New York, fuck yeah!", but we've always been like that so it's nice to get back on track. :)

You pretty much said everything I wanted to and I don't know if I like or hate being away from the mother country. It is true that things didn't get political until later. The way I always think of it is if a large part of your family dies horribly, and it's after a few weeks of mourning that you realize your relatives and neighbors are bickering about the will.

[teaberryblue]

That's a really good way of putting it. It does feel like that, where you're just so swept away by the pain and some people try to counter the pain with love, and then you slowly realize that people around you are countering it with anger.

[kiwi_magic]

Even when it actually happened, for me the depth and hugeness of it didn't even really hit until a few days later, not just the politics. At the time, it was just too huge and too terrible to properly process in any way at all, on a political or just emotional level.

[twowishesleft]

Your dad is a very articulate man, simple as that statement was. My parents were in a frenzy, practically. They didn't go so far as to pull me out of school like some others did, though.

I can't believe it's been six years already. That's so unreal.

[teaberryblue]

My dad is one of those people who is really, truly brilliant and yet I don't think anyone around him ever acknowledged it, so he doesn't. He is always good at simplicity, and at coming to the truth of a situation.

[twowishesleft]

Simplicity is brilliant. He sounds like it, from the few stories I remember reading.