I WANT to Forget

Is that so Un-American of me or what?

I know we are supposed to remember and reflect and all that jazz about what happened today, but frankly, I don't really want to.  Every time I see those images..every time...I start to cry.  And it's been 10 years.  Now, with the 10 year anniversary here, they are playing all these specials, replaying the images, releasing previously unseen footage, interviewing widows.  I don't know about you, but I don't really want to see it.  I will NEVER forget what happened, but don't need to relive it to remember either.  

I don't need to relive that I slept through the whole thing.  I had no clue.  I called my work to randomly check if they wanted me to come in and my boss said that with everything happening he wasn't sure.  I asked what he was talking about and he told me.  I ran and turned on the TV and watched it all unfolding like a movie on the screen.  It was hard to feel in those moments.  This is a movie, right?

Flags.  Flags everywhere.  You couldn't find flags in the stores, they were sold out.  Everyone was afraid.  Remember how polite everyone was in the days/weeks after?  It softened us collectively, if not temporarily.  I remember sitting on the couch on the 12th, watching TV non-stop the entire day.  I saw reporters crying, barely able to give their reports.  No one could hold it in. I swear the crying I did in those days gave me a wrinkle.  The least of worries..

There were rumors too.  I remember one rumor that a guy had been on the 88th floor of the north tower and he had "surfed" the debris down and survived.  As ridiculous as that sounds now, we all believed it at the time.  We so desperately wanted something to believe, to hear something outrageously positive.  Something to cling to.  

Did you feel utterly American in those days?  I did.  Uh-mer-uh-kin.  I got emails and messages from friends around the world, giving their sympathy.  The world was horrified.  And afraid, I think.  Afraid of what we would do next.  Because we are like a hornet's nest and everyone knows you don't kick a hornet's nest. 

Even in the earliest days after, I knew our world, our America, was changed forever.  There is a separation in my head of the times before, and after.  When I hear of something happening in the summer of 2001, I always think, that was our last good summer.  We were innocent, carefree, rich, having the time of our lives.  It changed somehow.  Now it's all terror threat levels, take off your shoes, body scanners, shoe bombs, terrorists, war, war, war.  My thoughts were confirmed the following month, when I flew for the first time since, when police with sub-automatic machine guns were at the airport, the security line was a mile long and no one was talking..no one.  We aren't in Kansas anymore people.  

Now, 10 years later, I am a mother.  A mother to a little boy born in this post 9/11 world.  He'll know no different, which is a shame, the images will be distant to him, unconnected.  My hope this beautiful day, this September 11th, is that there will be nothing to replace it in its horrors, nothing my Brixton will ever have to try to forget..