I’ve been putting off writing a post about 9/11 every year since it happened until some reasonable amount of time went by. At five years it still doesn’t seem like the right time. I’m not sure what I am waiting for, but only half way through the day I am already oversaturated with 9/11 stories and nostalgia. Of course people need to tell their stories and other people find comfort in reading them, but I guess I am just not there and I am not sure I will ever be there. Instead of telling you my 9/11 story, I’ll tell you my 9/12 and 9/13 stories sometime, as I find them much more unique and interesting. But for now, here’s my pared down 9/11 story, as much as I can muster telling anyway.

My memories of 9/11 are probably pretty much the same as yours. I had a meeting in downtown Manhattan that morning that had been postponed the night before, so I was home. I inexplicable woke up at around 8:45 which was odd on a day that I could have slept in a bit. I got onto work email minutes after and saw the back and forth about the plans hitting, wondering if somehow it was that impact that awoke me so early. I spent most of the day like you did; glued to my TV watching the same footage over and again, all the uncertainty and terror being punctuated with every passing hour and every single time they showed the planes crashing into the towers. Seriously, did anyone not know what was going on at that point? Why did we need to see it over and over again? I was disgusted and offended by the TV so I headed upstairs to see what I could see. I watched the first tower crumble from the roof of my old building on 24th Street, but went back down to my apartment before the second tower fell–I couldn’t take it anymore.
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I think I’ll have a popsicle today…

For some reason, shortly after 9/11, I found myself reading Camus’ The Plague. I got about a third of the way into it and had to stop. Just had to. Couldn’t take the depictions of quarantined cities and feelings of terror. The apocalyptic subject matter.

Today, five years later, I find myself two-thirds of the way through The Stand, Stephen King’s apocalyptic epic. Weird. Plenty of quarantine. Plenty of terror. And it hits close to home. Especially today.

A few weeks ago, I ran the inaugural New York City Half-Marathon. It was a really fun race, beginning in Central Park and winding its way through midtown and Times Square, before heading down the west side into the Financial District and finishing up at Battery Park–in view of the Statue of Liberty. Despite being soaked to the skin (it poured that day) and suffering the resultant body-chafing and bloody nipples, I pretty much reveled in the experience. You know, not something I get to do every day.

But as we headed downtown, the buildings of the Financial District looming directly in front of us, I had this very distinct, horrible moment in which I envisioned that we, this mass of runners, were running not a recreational race, but running for our lives. Again.

It was kind of…terrifying.

But then I cleared my head, and became instantly grateful that it wasn’t true. And this time, Battery Park was full not of ash and dust and debris, but, well, water and Gatorade and…popsicles.

A friend of mine was in Spain the day of the Madrid bombings. He had come in the day before – via train, from Seville – and the next day his train was one of those bombed. “The feeling was so strange,” he said. “Like 9/11.”

I began to argue. Only 200 people were killed there compared to the thousands in the World Trade Center attacks. Trains destroyed were terrible but what about two buildings that devastated the area around them?

Then I stopped. It didn’t matter how many people dead and what amount of wreckage. Afterwards both countries had lost the same sense of security, the same innocence. Both felt what other countries feel, albeit on a smaller scale, every day.

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It’s been 5 years since the World Trade Center attacks. It’s been 5 years since the first attack on American soil outside of Pearl Harbor. How do I feel about this? To be honest with you, I was going to write an entry entitled “Why 9/11 Doesn’t Matter.” That would have probably given you reason to read this entry, but after watching something on (of all things) 60 minutes last night, I realized why it did matter.

It mattered as events matter in changing the way people think, the way people interact, the way people view themselves and change priorities.

My initial thought was that we have not changed. Part of this is true.
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