I woke a bit late this morning, and stumbled out of bed to Alan Jackson’s song “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning” playing on the radio station I listen to in the mornings as I get ready for work. It took me a moment to realize why they were playing that song today. It’s 9/11 once again. Six years later, once again a Tuesday morning, and people are pausing again to remember.
I am a historian – that is, my bachelor’s degree is in history, and I have long been a lover of classes like social studies in high school, and whatever history related classes I could enroll in for university. The classic question for defining and personalizing moments in history seems to be this – where were you when….occurred? Where were you when you heard that John F. Kennedy had been killed? The classic Canadian one – where were you when Paul Henderson scored the winning goal in the 1972 series of the century? Where were you when you learned that the Challenger shuttle had exploded? People define these moments by their location when they learned of them.
September 11, 2001 has become one of those moments – not because of the aforementioned country song that asks the question “Where were you?” but because of the way the events of that day and the response to those events have shaped the following six years.
It is hard for me to believe that it has already been six years. The events of that day seem to live on in daily ways – reminders in the media each time conflict arises in the Middle East. Each time the death of a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan is reported in the news. Each time the world begins to debate the merits of the American presence in Iraq. This is an event that lives not in the past, but in the present psyche of the North American world.
In the same way that my dad can tell you where he was when Paul Henderson scored that famous goal, and my mom can tell you where she was when she learned that President Kennedy was killed, I can tell you the exact location when it hit home that a plane had flown into the World Trade Centers, and that they had collapsed.
It was my first semester of university, and I was sitting in the only 8:00 am lecture I took in the five years I spent getting my degree. It was, “Psychology 205: Introductory Psychology.” I was in a second floor classroom, poorly lit with feeble florescent bulbs. A very beige sort of place. A classmate came in and told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Centers, and speculated that it was terrorism. I remember dismissing her concerns, automatically assuming that it was a tragic accident. Our professor entered moments later, and repeated the news, this time confirming that this was indeed an act of terrorism against the United States.
Not a particularly profound memory, I suppose. I spent the lunch hour that day like so many others, glued to the television sets that had been set up in the hallways to allow students to follow the stories. I remember feeling dazed as I moved from class to class, not quite able to absorb this thing that was happening.
I remember walking into a video rental store a few days later, when the news coverage of the rescue efforts was still going on 24 hours a day on all of the television channels, determined to rent something funny, because I was done with the grieving, and the reality, and wanted to simply escape for a little while. I remember feeling a little bit guilty for wanting to laugh in the midst of all that sadness and fear.
Six years later I’m still remembering. I’m feeling grateful for the lives of the police officers and firefighters who sacrificed themselves in the attempt to rescue others. I’m wondering at the state of unrest in the world – the constant fear of terrorism, the lack of peace. I’m feeling a bit more proud than normal of my dual American and Canadian heritage and citizenship – and also conflicted as the retaliatory American presence on the world stage clashes with the peacemaking Canadian presence. I’m thinking about the world seems less innocent the last six years – or maybe it’s simply that a tiny bit of naiveté was lifted from my eyes that Tuesday morning. I’m remembering, and grieving, and praying for peace.
