I remember where I was on September eleventh ten years ago. Sophomore year of high school, just getting started. The old brick building did not have central air, so all of the teachers with windows kept them open. Interior classrooms without windows were just out of luck. When our principal came over the intercom the first time, stating that “an event had occurred in New York,” without any more detail, nobody really had any idea what that meant, and we wondered curiously. A bit later, perhaps an hour, I sat in math class working on practice problems from the overhead when the principal returned to the intercom, explaining that at this point we were all going to be dismissed from school and sent straight home. I remember a nervous feeling at the pit of my stomach, how everyone was abuzz, how I had no idea. How I wanted to be at home. Sweat dripped down my back under my shirt as I walked home across the back practice fields, and through the back of my neighborhood. It was so bright, I remember having a headache and no sunglasses, carrying my backpack on one shoulder so that the sweat wouldn’t come through my shirt. And I remember walking in the front door and seeing my mom in her yard work clothes, sitting on the edge of the ottoman in the family room, her elbows on her knees like a child, her eyes glued to the television. I can still vividly remember the picture on the television—the repeated action of the airplanes crashing through the two towers of the World Trade Center.
I also remember where I was on September eleventh six years ago. Sophomore year of college this time, just getting started. A morning class had me out the door of my dorm by nine, and I did not return until about noon. Those hours were a fog to me—early that morning I had learned that my grandmother, my dad’s mom, had passed away after battling Alzheimer’s disease for many years late the evening before, September tenth. Though sobering, her death was not a shock, and in some ways, it was a kindness—to her. But losing someone you have spent many years loving is an emptying experience. It was so warm in the sun that day, and I remember that the weather felt very wrong. I wanted gray rain. In my room the lights were off and a box fan stuck in the window pulled in the air, which then circulated and lifted the pages of a textbook on the edge of my desk. Sitting down, I opened up my laptop, then e-mail, to find out about a homework assignment. There was an e-mail from my mom, a short one without proper punctuation, telling me that my cousin had been found dead in his room. No explanation. Some kind of diabetic heart attack. A grandson of the grandmother who had just died—my dad’s nephew. I choked, felt as if my stomach would seize. And then I started to cry—a flood of tears the likes of which I had never produced, and have not recreated since. I remember falling on the floor, sobbing, pain in my stomach, my face pressed against the grainy, tan rug. The sound of the fan. I remember my friend coming in the room, finding me there, and how I couldn’t even speak to explain why I was crying. I remember staring at the news on the computer screen for hours afterward. I remember the severity of the emotion so vividly, the pain and confusion and loneliness, that when I think about it my shoulder blades still draw up as if they are being sewn together.
And I remember where we were on September eleventh three years ago. In the hospital, waiting for my sister to give birth to her first child. My mom had been there with her all day, and Mark, my fiancé then, and I came later when we got off from work. I remember how Mark wanted to bring her a milkshake from Cook Out, and that Hannah wanted us to hang around in her room all afternoon so she wouldn’t be bored while she waited. She was happy and youthful, with her ponytail high up and off to the side, so fresh and so much more enthusiastic than I would have been, knowing what was coming. I remember when it was time, and we all cleared out and went to the waiting room, and I remember when Josh came out an announced they had had a son, Jonathan Turner Adams. There were a few tears, but mostly just ecstasy, and I remember that she let me come in with her first, with my mom and Josh, and I sang Blackbird to that little baby boy.
Today I was listening to the radio; there have been memorial tributes all day, remembering the tenth anniversary of the attack on America. One man said, “All we have is memories,” and that struck me. I want to memorialize it for all of these reasons, along with my fellow countrymen, along with my family. September eleventh. Ten years ago today the towers fell. Six years ago today my family fell apart. Three years ago today we mended up again. Today is a new day.
