In 2001, I was 20 years old.
In another year, I will be 40 . . . and September 11, 2001 will be the hanger across which my life drapes in equal distribution.
I’ve thought about that a great deal these past few days: about what it means to have lived a lifetime almost equal to the life I lived before the twin towers fell; about how the world has changed; about how I have changed; about what I have seen; and about what I hope to see.
When the plane hit the first tower, I was in my newswriting class in the journalism library at the University of Georgia. We crowded around the television in the back of the room, not really comprehending. A girl in my class nervously laughed, and Conrad Fink, a legend of a professor, narrowed his distinctive eyebrows into almost a triangle and eviscerated her for that reaction. But, of course, she wasn’t making fun of the events; in a moment, the second tower was hit, and it was so surreal and upside down that laughter made as much sense as tears. Who was prepared for watching a Will Smith film, minus Will Smith and minus the fiction, in real life?
Our professor whisked us to the broadcast journalism room, where we saw horrible, raw feeds on TVs all around. I don’t know how long we stayed there. It was barely real. I stood in the cool darkness of that room in my khaki shorts, my sorority t-shirt, watching small dots streaking down the screen: small dots that I understood were people, plummeting. I was watching this live, with my backpack on, trying to reconcile the chill bumps on my arm from the air conditioning with the dots I saw on the screen.
Afterwards, I walked to the bus and then to my car and then to my apartment. It was such a beautiful day. I shoved clothes in my bag and got back in my car. I drove to the safest people I could think of: my mom and dad. They lived on a rural Georgia farm. All the way home, I wondered: was this a war? where would be next? who would be next?
It took four hours to get home, and my brother was home from high school by that time. He looked at me weirdly . . . and I remember being afraid for him: afraid we would go to war, and he would be drafted; afraid this was my generation’s war and we weren’t grown up enough for it; afraid, in some ways, that the ground under my feet was about to open up and swallow us all whole.
My dad told us to get in the car, and we went to our church. It was just our family, but we prayed. I don’t remember any words we said, but I’m pretty sure I prayed for safety. I was so afraid. I was so afraid for all of my friends, for all of my family. I was so afraid for those people who were still under those buildings. God, just keep us safe; please, God, keep us safe. My privilege didn’t have any other words at that time.
How could that be half a lifetime ago?
And yet, so much has happened.
I graduated. I moved to Virginia. I went to law school. I got a job. I got married. I moved to Atlanta. I almost lost my faith. I got another job. I went to counseling. I refound my faith. I moved to northwest Georgia. I got a policy job. I had a son. I had another son. I quit my job. I learned to cook chicken. I wrote a book. I had another son. I moved to South Carolina. I learned to cook shrimp.
Yes, in just a few sentences I see how a whole different life time has passed since 2001, and I see that I have changed; that the world I knew has changed. Whether it has changed because people are worse or because I grew into seeing beyond myself I can’t say for certain. I suspect generations have always struggled equally with wickedness . . . though at other times with less access to platform and with less provocation.
One thing I can see with clarity is that the fear I articulated in panic on September 11, 2001, has come to pass: the war of hatred that began that day with terrorists on airplanes flying into buildings is my generation’s war; only now, it looks different. Now the war is fought in schools and churches where angry young men fire weapons on the unarmed; now the war is fought where men and women are targeted for violence and murder because of their race; now the war is fought where looters and politicians seek to steal the righteous voice of the oppressed and turn it into a mockery and a commodity; now the war is fought where leaders encourage divisiveness and inequality; now the war is fought where neighbor turns against neighbor under the cowardly protection of social media and engages in behavior and speech we find reprehensible in kindergarteners.
The war that we fight is a war of open hatred and divisive politicization that has somehow seeped below the surface and sprung up like a choking vine in house and home and community. No longer do we need an enemy to destroy us . . . we have allowed ourselves to be destroyed by common people using common tactics to proliferate common hatred,
and we don’t even recognize it because the enemy is us warring against ourselves.
If you, like me, can identify yourself as someone whose life drapes in equal measure across the hanger of 2001 . . . it is time for us to rise up and say ENOUGH. Perhaps we weren’t mature enough in 2001 to pray for anything other than safety, but we are now. We have lived a lifetime more, and it is time for us to bravely set a different tone: one that unifies instead of divides, one that builds instead of tears down, one that displaces a culture and governance built on hatred and vitriol and capitalizes instead on service, humility, respect, and love.
To do this, we must be uncommon people doing uncommon things. We must be vision casters. We must be example setters. We must walk away from the keyboard when it tempts us to tear another down and use that energy to build something that lasts. We must buy a desk for the child doing virtual school on a sofa. We must engage with the teen grocery worker that brings out our order. We must gently hold those in our inner circles to a higher standard and correct with our respectful speech when mockery and name calling becomes the default. We must demand different by being different.
We must expect the next 20 years to look different than the past 20 years, not as consumers of society, but as active participants in change.
Today is September 12, 2020, the 19thanniversary of the date when Americans rallied and pulled together in the face of tragedy and tribulation to show compassion, resilience, courage, and grit.
It is time to rise up and be the September 12th generation.
Darlene Lofty says
The way you put words to feelings never ceases to amaze me. You are a wise woman.
Michael A. Stimpert says
This is an amazing statement and summary of what we have become and what we must do to correct that. I hope that every American can read it.
Tony Smith says
I agree with Mike Stimpert! I will surely share this with my friends and family. Thank you for such an inspiring an patriotic message that helps us look first through our own lens and hopefully with ardent prayers and actions we can be part of the change that makes us a stronger nation in the next twenty years!
Aileen Cappa says
Very well spoken. First thing is to find a privately owned news station like I have in San Diego, CA. Each morning is not filled with horrific tales. Yes they report on the looters and rioters but they do not dwell on that part. They find all the great responses, all the people pitching in to clean up and help rebuild. Just yesterday my mother was saying that America was no longer viewed as great and that people were no longer wanting to migrate here; politically driven media. I told her America is not the President or even the over employed senate and house personnel. I told her America is still great because I see it every day in the actions people take to exact some normalcy for our children, to help those hard hit, to feed the hungry put out of work by this “Pandemic”, to fight for and create law that supports reopening businesses and getting us back to work thus repairing our economy. We are not “the idiots” some law makers think we are and I don’t believe we will ever fall prey to those that want to make us a dependent nation. Keep the fire! Love everything you said here.