My family rolled forward onto the Throgs Neck Bridge and we all craned our necks in anticipation. It was our first trip over since the tragedies and the first real time look at a newly empty skyline.
Where Two Towers of prosperity were, was now filled with a thick, black smoke, a cloud that was created in just seconds, but remained for weeks.
I rolled down a window and as vivid as the cloud was, the smell that filled our SUV was now upon us. It smelled like Death.
***
Rumors spread through the halls. Some were in panic, some devastated, some excited, and some didn’t know what to be. The Red, White and Blue of untargeted patriotism was already beginning to show itself in the halls of my suburban high school, about an hour north of where destruction and chaos and death rang like a bell that my generation had never heard before.
Someone said that their history class had a TV and the teacher had turned on to the coverage. Perhaps the teacher knew the significance of the history in the making, the students, almost certainly, did not.
I was in my third period band class, drumming away on the tympani. For those of us in that room, in that school and in this country, it was the waning moments of what we thought as normalcy.
Through the belting brass section just in front of me, down through clarinets, oboes and flutes and back up the wall past our conductor, rang an inaudible declaration of change from school administration. Our music faded, the song ended and the loudspeaker delivered the message that in essence would shape our lives and change our future.
“If any students have parents that work in the World Trade Center, please report to the main office.”
Cryptic and vague, but powerful, the message set off a curiosity of which resolution may never come. “Why?” We all asked.
Forgotten are the days of loose security at an airport. Forgotten are the days where a bomb sniffing dog and soldiers were rarely seen in public. Not Forgotten are the names of those who lost their lives and families who shared death.
When I look back on the fateful day, 10 years removed in history, but vivid as ever in memory, it is shocking to imagine the naivety that was true for so many of us. Who is Al Qaida? How could someone bring knives onto an airplane? How could this happen in the United States of America?
In the immediate aftermath that followed, America vowed to be unbroken. A feeling of patriotism and nationalism emerged from the ashes, bringing a subtle Red, White and Blue comfort to the tragedy that touched us all.
Shortly after the outpouring bereavement and support that brought the USA as closely together as any time possibly since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the full pain of Osama bin Laden’s work began to manifest itself.
On September 11, 2001 I returned home from school to find my mother and a family friend watching the news unfold on TV. As the pair helped answer what must have been an abundance of questions, my mother looked at me and said, “This is the Kennedy assassination, of your generation. You’ll always remember exactly where you were, when you heard the news.”
Not only do I remember where I was when the Towers were attacked, I recall the closeness that we all showed and the way this nation came together. However now, 10 years later, that closeness, sadly, has eroded.
With political bickering and rhetoric at an all time high, with the economy in shambles and a new President whose message of “Hope” has so far rung hollow it seems difficult to imagine a country so close as it was following the attack.
It is my hope that as we all pause to remember those who were lost on this day 10 years ago, that we also remember the time when we all came together, because it is that time, when this country is at its best.
May we never let the smoke rise again.
