remembering.
Try comparing that experience to those who lived through WWI, WWII, and Vietnam. I can't. It's just a different era. The war hasn't changed my ability to buy food. I'm not limited to the amount of sugar I can use in a week. I don't have a victory garden. I'm not filling a job that a drafted man left vacant. I'm not responding to a poster of Uncle Sam telling me he wants ME, and I'm not part of a new music movement with a powerful anti-war message.
I read the news and I fear for the lives and peace of the soldiers, their families, and the devastated nations of the world. I want the war to end. But here's what 9/11 has given our generation: our first "Where were you when...?" moment. I'm too young to remember the Gulf War and the Challenger. I remember the OJ Simpson trial and the funeral of Princess Diana, but 9/11 was the first time those of us born in the 80s have come close to true global uncertainty. And I will always remember it.
This year, on the 10th anniversary of my most significant "Where were you when...?" moment, my husband and I will actually be boarding a plane, returning from a wedding in New England. Part of me feels irreverent, part feels terrified, and the other part feels oddly at peace. I'm forced to remember 9/11 when I spend hours packing in accordance with TSA's rigid guidelines, and I'm forced to remember it every time I am patted down at the airport to the point I want to cry. So it feels strangely appropriate to honor the day in flight - not at home watching the TV - but above the broken world below, thinking of what my generation will have to remember next.
Instead of composing a new piece on the subject of war and 9/11, I'm copying the opening of Chapter 6 of my memoir below, entitled "By Fire," which relays my memory of that day in comparison with my grandfather's fragmented memories. I had a profound interest in my grandfather's military service, and his refusal to remember those days. With 9/11, I came a little closer to understanding my grandfather as more than just my grandfather, more than just an old man with Alzheimer's. I understood him as a man who will always remember where he was when ...
_________________________________________
[Excerpt: AT EASE, Chapter 6]:
By Fire
It was December, four months since I had started my freshman year at the University of North Carolina, three months since the biggest terrorist attack on the United States claimed New York’s Twin Towers and thousands of lives, seven months before Grandma and Grandpa moved back down to Florida. They had come down for a week to spend Christmas with us and prepare for their move. Mom took Grandma to see a few houses; I volunteered to walk with Grandpa at the mall since it was warm outside. December in Florida simply meant that as we decorated the Christmas tree we could wave back to the palm fronds that yawned in the sunshine.
We walked slowly, Grandpa’s body slightly bent forward as if he were at bat; he barely lifted his feet as he pushed himself forward. Occasionally he brushed one hand through the fluffs of white hair on his head or bent down to wave at a little girl. Both tender gestures reflected the young boy in the old man’s body, the kid who would rather hold a baseball bat than a flamethrower, who would rather have a pretty girl tell him to watch his mouth when he whistled at her than hear the commands of a general to go in and kill.
After the attack on September 11th I could relate to my parents and grandparents in a new way. They had different stories of where they were when John F. Kennedy was killed, what their parents had said when they heard about Pearl Harbor, how they felt when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. And at eighteen I had a story of my own.
I was in astronomy class and my professor made a passing comment about a plane crash in New York. He said it fast and most of the class didn’t hear. But in my next class we watched the news, live footage of smoke and fire barreling through buildings, people running and screaming through the streets of New York covered in dust, firemen swarming like ants, and like ants they were tiny against the power of the fire. Then we heard the live announcement that Washington, D.C. had been hit. I panicked – my oldest sister Christine attended law school in Washington and I lived five hours away from her and thirteen hours away from home where I should have been, sitting on the couch next to my father so he could explain everything to me and assure me it would be okay. My professor dismissed us as we were all visibly shaken, and I ran back to my dorm room to call Christine. When she answered the phone I cried until she convinced me she was fine. I sat on the balcony of my dorm and watched the peace around me, the sky a clear blue and the trees a rich green.
“What do you think about this war?” I wondered if Grandpa even had room to think about the war of my generation, when the war of his already dominated the parts of his brain still in tact.
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Oh.”
I waited, nervous that if I pushed too hard I would push him back to the place he hid with his memory, away from the world and those who wanted to know but could never understand.
“I feel sorry for those poor boys,” he finally said. We walked a little further; our route began at Sears and we planned to loop around the carousel at the south end and come back. “How much longer are we walking?” he asked, eyeing the benches beyond the carousel.
“Do you want to sit down?”
He nodded and we sat. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
“What did you do in World War II?” I doubted he would tell me; he hadn’t even told Grandma much more than the year he enlisted.
He looked at his hands. “They dropped us off in Naha, the capital city. We all jumped off the boat and ran up the beach as fast as we could. Such a beautiful place. Such a shame.”
“Do you remember much about Okinawa?”
“We ran up the beach and into the caves. And we had the flamethrowers. And we had to put the fire in the caves, and the Japanese came running out.” He breathed deeply and licked his lips. “Such a beautiful people. It was such a shame.”