20 Years On.
However you experienced it, 9/11 left a bruise.
Throughout this week, I’ve been watching National Geographic’s 9/11: One Day in America. The six-part series, made in collaboration with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, chronicles the events of that day through videos and photos taken, audio received from emergency operators, and testimonies from survivors.
It’s a difficult watch. While never exploitative — it shows some of that day’s most horrific moments, but uses restraint and rarely replays them — it’s still an emotional, devastating experience. Twenty years on, images of airplanes crashing into buildings, people falling to their deaths and skyscrapers collapsing into rubble are just as gutting and horrendous as they were that morning.
For several years after the 9/11 attacks, I had a DVD produced by HBO that compiled similar footage (some of it also shows up in the Nat Geo doc). I watched it every year on the date for perhaps the first five years following the event. It was always a difficult view, but I felt I owed it to the victims and their families to never forget what happened.
But I think there’s another reason I was drawn to the footage. You see, I didn’t experience the events of Sept. 11 like many of my friends and family members. I didn’t see it on the TV. I didn’t watch it with loved ones. I actually was far from a television as much of it was happening. And I feel like I’ve always been on the outside of that experience, and I wonder how much of replaying the footage was a way of trying to process my disbelief with reminders that yes, this actually happened, and assuage my guilt of not being as terrified (initially) as everyone else.
I was in my final semester of undergraduate studies on September 11, 2001. My term largely consisted of an internship at a PR company in Farmington Hills that I had started one day earlier, and a history class that I’d put off through most of my studies. On that Tuesday morning, I had to head to Detroit for my class and then, afterward, head to the internship.
My class was a bit later that morning; I think around 9:15 or so. And I recall my commute to Detroit vividly. It was a gorgeous morning; clear blue skies, the temperature was perfect. I was in a good mood. I sipped my coffee and wasn’t too upset as I hit the standard traffic jam on I-75. I cranked up my favorite morning show (“Drew and Mike”) and listened to them hassle an old man who had flown around the world using commuter flights and was oddly proud of it. There was a billboard I passed for the radio station that had a digital display showing what was on at the time; Drew and Mike had changed it to read “Conceited Plane Dork,” and I had a good chuckle at that.
As the interview ended, the hosts’ producer told them to turn on the TVs, and I heard them describe smoke pouring from one of the towers at the World Trade Center. They were baffled; reports were coming in that a plane had the tower. They mused about what kind of pilot could miss a giant building in front of them. They wondered where the rest of the plane was. One of the hosts told viewers to make sure they caught footage of this later in the day because it was the strangest sight.
Their banter suddenly devolved into confusion. They explained that the TV station must have gotten footage of the plane hitting the tower, because they just saw a plane hit it and erupt into a fireball. It quickly became apparent that what they’d actually seen was live footage of a second plane hitting the other WTC tower, and what we were watching was a concerted attack on America.
My morning peace evaporated. I listened raptly, switching back and forth from Drew and Mike to the local news station, but everyone was just as confused. I drove down Warren Avenue to my parking structure, and the only words I could find were “what the f---” over and over. I pulled into the parking structure and got out of my car. I considered skipping class that morning and either staying in my car to listen to the radio or heading over to a student lounge with a television. But it was early in the semester and I wanted to finish it well. Besides, I thought, the planes had already hit. My class was only two hours long. Surely the worst was over and they’d still be trying to figure out what was happening when I got out. So, I went to class.
My professor and most of my class must not have listened to the radio or turned on a television that morning, because there was no mention of the attack. I sheepishly began to wonder if I had made too big deal of it. I sat listening to a lecture about early American history, totally unaware that one of the biggest days of modern world history was unfolding.
I walked out of class into a world that had changed, and I could feel it. As I walked the hallways, I could sense something was off. People were too silent. A girl stopped me by a stairwell; “did you hear what is happening in our country? Planes crashed into the World Trade Center; they bombed the Pentagon; there’s a bomb at the White House.” I raised an eyebrow and dismissed it as paranoia (and, of course, in hindsight, many of her assertions were just rumors). But then I flipped on my phone and saw 12 missed calls from my mother.
I called her back. She asked if I knew what was happening. I said I knew that some planes had flown into the World Trade Center. What she said next is etched into my memory.
“The World Trade Center collapsed; the buildings aren’t there anymore.”
That was when the world started spinning, as I realized what that meant. Hundred, probably thousands, of lives lost. I’d never been to New York, but the Twin Towers were symbolic of the grandeur and enormity of Manhattan. And those two buildings, the tallest in the world, were just gone? All in the space of one Tuesday morning?
She filled me in on the rest. The plane hitting the Pentagon. The crash in Pennsylvania. No one was quite sure whether any other planes were out there, any more targets in sight. She asked if I was near a major city; I told her I was at class, in Detroit. She told me to get out of there; they were asking people to leave cities if they could.
The rest of the day is broken up into two feelings. The first was panic. I drove the Lodge Freeway from Detroit to Farmington Hills for my internship, and I was ultra aware of every vehicle that got too close, every sound that resembled an aircraft. I didn’t get any work done at that internship that afternoon; like everyone else, I kept refreshing the news sites for more information. The pictures I saw were surreal. New York in a cloud of smoke, footage of the Twin Towers falling to the ground. A plane crash in a Pennsylvania field.
The rest of the day was spent with a numb feeling. I don’t think we turned CNN off for three days. I went to eat with my parents and sister at Bob Evans, but we picked at our plates. I called a friend that evening and we sat at a Coney Island sipping coffee, trying to wrap our brains around what had happened and what it meant for the future. Would there be further attacks? Would there be a war? Would I be drafted? We never asked what the death toll would be, but it was always at the back of our minds.
Everyone talks about the days following 9/11 as one of unity and togetherness. And there was a sense of that. There was a resolve that we’d do better as a nation, and we’d stop caring about trivial things. But it was all undergirded by confusion and fear. On Sept. 12, I led a Wednesday night Bible study for my fellow college students at church. I didn’t know what to say. I can’t remember what we talked about. I think we just took time to share our thoughts, process it and pray. We went to a coffee shop afterward and stared at the horrifying pictures in the newspaper. My eyes kept coming back to the one later christened The Falling Man, wearing a suit and looking serene as he plummeted headfirst from one of the Twin Towers.
It’s tempting to want to wrap this up with some sort of tidy lesson or moral. To talk about the unity we felt in the days following 9/11 and urge us to return to that. To issue a screed about how that resolve deteriorated to in-fighting and political divisiveness we still feel the effects of. To muse on God having a plan or have some sort of message.
I don’t want to do that. You’ve heard it all. And I think the best we can do today is acknowledge that twenty years ago, however we experienced it, was a day we will never forget. It will never not hurt, and we will likely never become desensitized to it. Lives were lost. Families were broken. Our nation was irrevocably changed. And the best we can do is quietly remember it, sit in silence and pay our respects to those who didn’t get to see Sept. 12.
The Digest
Where you can find me online
Are Masks the New WWJD Bracelets? My months-long writer’s block cleared up in recent weeks, and the result was that I started publishing at the Jesus Junkyard again after a long dormancy. This entry looks at the fad of WWJD bracelets in the 1990s, and wonders whether our current situation provides a more tangible way to live out love for our neighbors.
9/11 and the Christian music response: Also at Jesus Junkyard, I wrote this piece about how CCM responded to the Sept. 11 attacks. From jingoistic anthems to the birth of the modern worship movement, I think there’s a line to be drawn in Christian culture that exists on Sept. 11, 2001.
Chrisicisms
The pop culture I’m consuming
Survivor’s Song by Paul Tremblay: Tremblay’s horror novel received notice when it was released earlier this year because its look at a world under pandemic so eerily predicted our current state. Of course, it’s not one-to-one. This novel focuses on Massachusetts being plagued by a mutated rabies virus, not a nation under quarantine. But Tremblay’s depictions of overrun hospitals, unrest in the streets, and conspiracy theories run amok is very familiar. But this isn’t pandemic porn; what Tremblay has crafted is an intimate, haunting story about two friends trying to survive an increasingly bleak situation. The prose is often beautiful, even in its most horrible moments, and Tremblay has a knack for balancing hope and horror. It might have worked slightly better as a short story or novella that cut some extraneous bits, but as is it’s an effective and often moving piece of work.
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu): My wife and I are two episodes into this series, and I’m really enjoying it. Chances are, I’d watch it just because it stars Steve Martin and Martin Short, but I’m impressed by how good it really is. The show finds three residents of a New York apartment (Martin, Short, and Selena Gomez) bonding over their love of true crime podcasts and joining to solve a murder in their own building. I’d expected the presence of the two to lead to a broad, silly farce. And the show is often very funny. But it’s a more subdued, smart comedy, more in line with what Martin has written in his plays and novels. The podcast and murder angle is fun, and there’s a genuinely good mystery that unrolls. But what I’m most drawn to is its approach to loneliness and the way big cities allow people to isolate and hide their deepest secrets. Curious to see where this one goes.
What We Do in the Shadows (FX): Now this is the silly stuff. The vampire mockumentary hits its third season and it’s just as crude, funny and inventive as ever. Taika Waititi’s film of the same name is one of my very favorite movies of the decade and possibly the funniest movie of the last 20 years, so this show had a huge hurdle to clear. Three seasons in, I’ve laughed very hard and very often at the antics of Nadja, Lazlo, Nandor, Guillermo and Colin Robinson. The show can be smart in finding new ways to draw laughs from vampire mythology and the modern world, or it can devolve into low-brow bathroom and bedroom humor. Either way, it consistently works.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine (NBC): My wife and I have long been fans of the Andy Samberg police comedy, but somehow we let three weeks of double episodes pass before catching up. Halfway through its final season, the show is just as funny and lovable as ever, and it also is taking some attempts to address the current national police situation. Honestly, I like the show just when it’s a silly, weird hangout comedy, and I continue to love every word out of Andre Braugher’s mouth. I’m curious to see how this wraps up its run.