September 11, 2009. Rain complicates the already difficult DC area traffic. It could be just another September day, but on this day the memories urge me to stop and reflect.
We all remember where we were that morning. I was in my kitchen watching the Today show. Just six miles from the Pentagon, I heard American Airlines flight 11 fly low overhead and felt the rumble of its impact. I was aware that the first and second planes had hit the twin towers in New York City, and now, even closer to home, another attack. Fear edged out confusion. What was next?
You wouldn't think it would be easy to forget how eight years ago our world came apart. The images of fire high in the sky splitting a steel tower in half. The panic in the voices of passengers on Flight 93, telling their loved ones goodbye. The blurred smudge in a photo, undeniably a man or woman, launched to their death from the breach of a burning inferno high in the sky. The smoldering gash in the side of the Pentagon where catastrophe consumed an entire aircraft and its 92 passengers and crew members. Still I must dig deep to recover the sense of panic that I kept at bay in the waking hours after 9/11. The dread and anxiety that surfaced at night when the drone of fighter jets circled the skies overhead.
Over these eight years, our memories have dimmed. At first, we were compelled to look, and then we were persuaded to look away. By some consensus the public was not privy to, it was determined we should not dwell on the horror of that day. We should not be consumed by hatred or motivated by anger, or act upon a desire for revenge. We should not be goaded into responding to an unprovoked attack without proper thought and consideration. When it became known that Islamic jihadists were behind the attacks, we were told that we were not fighting Islam, but only its most extreme fringe.
But over the intervening years, it is not just our memories that have faded. It is our nation's commitment in the days afterward to our common interest, our shared grief and the solidarity we found with each other in the days afterward. When I remember the horror of 9/11, I also remember how the arms length that we maintain between ourselves and those who are different from us was somehow lessened. I remember how the guard we hold up to defend ourselves from unspoken accusations of racism or intolerance was let down just enough to sense that we were all of us Americans. And it was worth coming together to stop the horror that had visited us from threatening us again.
Now our grief has waned and the accord that bridged the political, racial and cultural divisions among us has dissipated. Our urgency has been replaced with war fatigue and our shared clarity of purpose has been undermined by doubt and recriminations. Some turned on our president, "Bush lied and thousands died!" and others shouted, "Un-american!" When we looked away from the images of terror, we forgot the enemy that brought that terror to us. And we forgot that we were one nation, indivisible. We turned on each other, feeding the flame of partisan disagreements until today they burn like a firestorm, nearly out of control and bringing some to ask, "Is America coming apart?"
I choose to remember that day, in prayer and remembrance of thousands of innocent lives lost. I remember not only the strangers, but two high school friends, grown up, married and with two small children of their own. I remember Leslie Whittington and Charlie Falkenberg, and Dana and Zoe Falkenberg, a family that was and then was no more. I choose to remember the fear that fed the pit in my stomach, the anxiety that kept me awake at night, and the justified anger that underscored my support of President Bush's war on terrorism.
I also remember that when we were down, we came together. I pray that union will be stronger than our current divisiveness. Maybe we need to remember 9/11 and who the real enemy is.
[digg=http://digg.com/political_opinion/Remembering_9_11_is_Medicine_for_What_Divides_Us]
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