How My 15 Year Old Self Saw 9/11

Saturday, September 11, 2021

20 years ago the weather was very similar to how it is today. Maybe not quite as breezy, but very bright, blue, and sunny. It was beautiful. It was a Tuesday, and I was in Mrs. Robb’s 10th grade Biology class waiting for the bell to ring to dismiss us when one of my classmates’ younger brothers knocked on the door to tell us that school was being let out early. I don’t remember exactly what James said, but he was causal and nonchalant—I think he was more nervous about addressing his older brother’s class than anything, and like all of us, he didn’t really know what was actually going on—but it must’ve been something scary because I remember being worried for my brothers, and wondering if they’d be drafted to go to war. I remember walking through the empty halls of the school, scared and wondering what was going on when I ran into the one of the teachers—Mrs. Alexander, I think—who reassured me, but I could tell she was shaken herself.

One of my parents must’ve picked me and my two younger brothers up. When we got home, even though I didn’t know what was happening, I knew it was terrible and momentous, and my instincts to record what was happening kicked in. I got out my film camera and documented what was going on around me: the tv screens, my mom gathering with some neighbors out front as fighter jets soared above us, my sister on the phone, my 8 year old little brother riding his bike and having no sense of the gravity of the situation. I can’t find some of those pictures, but what I have is below. The tv is both huge and tiny, and feels like it’s something from the 1950’s rather than belonging to the new millennium.

My dad and I went downtown to DC the day after on September 12, which is also his birthday. He turned 48 that day, and I was 15. Again, I brought my camera. Flags were at half staff. We saw the Pentagon from a distance. We went to the Mall and saw the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument, we stopped by the Vietnam Memorial. Other people had the same idea to go, to see, to observe, to mourn communally. It was another beautiful September day, but eerily quiet, somber, and strange. A huge tear had just been ripped through our collective idea of safety and reality, of what was possible and not, and yet there we were, still riding the subway, driving in cars, walking on sidewalks, eating, talking, seeing, breathing.

It was hard to comprehend the enormity and sadness of it all—it still is. But in the immediate aftermath it was simply hard to understand on a very basic level what had just happened, and what to do next. I once heard Casey Affleck describe witnessing one of the planes fly into one of the towers. He was standing at his window, drinking coffee, and when he saw it he kind of let out a bewildered laugh/huh? He described it as being so unbelievable, like seeing a dog driving a car, that his brain couldn’t compute what it was seeing.