“Wait, what is 9/11?”
She was joking — but for a brief moment of panic, I wondered wether the 14 year old sitting beside me, might actually not know.
Where was she 20 years ago? She was, perhaps, a fantasy in one — or both — of her parents’ minds. She was, perhaps, a spirit preparing for her eventual arrival to this world. Or she was, perhaps, part of the ether — part of the neither here nor there.
What she wasn’t — glued to the television, frantically calling relatives who worked downtown, cursing at the jammed cell phone service and lack of information. What she wasn’t — gathered into assemblies at school, where teachers and principals all over the country tried — while gasping at their own grief — to explain what was happening. What she wasn’t — on the precipice of massive global change that would affect the lives of generations to come. What she wasn’t — experiencing inexplicable fear, outrage, and — at the same time — marveling at the depths of human kindness when faced with the depths of human cruelty.
This wasn’t the first conversation I’d had with teenagers — whether in the classroom, at the dinner table, or in the community — where they wondered out lout about it. To those of us who lived through it, it is a day whose images are forever cemented in our memories. Whether we were in New York City, watching it from rooftops, walking miles on foot because transit was halted — or whether we were anywhere else in America — transfixed to the news, clutching our loved ones — praying, wondering, calling — we remember.
I remember walking into physics class, and the TV was on — and we didn’t understand what was happening. I remember kids crying, school letting out early, but without much planning — and frantic calls to relatives and friends in New York. I remember — in the pre Facebook world — wishing I could get in touch with friends who had just started college, just a few blocks north of WTC. I remember sitting on my front step, waiting for my then best friend to come, because all we knew was safety in being together — and then being forbidden from leaving my house because we just didn’t know if it was over. I remember going to vigils, and hugging friends who’d lost loved ones. I remember the relief, when people picked up the phone.
When I speak to these kids, and I try to convey to them the reverberating trauma of that day — nationally, locally, globally — I notice something. We — who were then sentient — have been forever changed by it. We — who saw the images over, and over, and over again — who cried, who prayed, who couldn’t understand — who absorbed grief and pain beyond our understanding — are a different breed. We — who have lived a large scale trauma — have relived it in the last two years, as the pandemic — a terror of a different kind — has ravaged our nation. When I tell them that this — what they are living now — is what has changed them forever, they then ask — “what can we do?”
What can they do — as the future adults of our world, parents, educators, leaders? When we look towards downtown New York City, or to Washington, DC, or to fields in PA — and certainly when we see airplanes flying above us — we see it again. It may not be as poignant as it was 20, 15, or even 10 years ago — but the shadow is there, that flicker of memory, that moment of triggering in the brain.
Twenty years ago today, the world was one way, and the next day — it was forever changed. We are now in the period of change — a slow, excruciating, languishing change.
Those shadows, for our children, will be the phantoms of masks on their faces (Please Gd may they soon be a memory), will be the fear of quarantine when a classmate has a runny nose, will be the forever lingering sting of hand sanitizer on dry hands. It will be that fear of the unknown, distrust in the other, and this deep, nagging uncertainty that who they are meant to be — may not be meant to be.
So what do we do?
We find the ride in the wave. We find the ways in which this change is creating opportunity in our lives — even in the most desperate of ways.
It is unrealistic, I know, to push people who are already at their frayed edges, to do more — be communal, be helpful, be there, be everywhere. It is also, however, imperative that we don’t dissolve into inaction.
We contribute — somehow — to the wave of change that must come from this. We teach our children the power of kindness, of helping each other, and of working together to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. We model for kids how to be patient, loving, kind, curious — to and about ourselves, so they can do it for themselves. We show them that emotion ok to show, even if it is inconvenient. We show them that tears are ok, hugs are healing (when appropriate), that talking about stuff can help, and asking for help is necessary. We teach hope, rather than fear.
Something that always nagged at me from this week’s Torah portion, Vayeilech, is that G-d tells Moses that he knows his people, his children, will disappoint and stray from the path — and that in that moment, Gd will leave. As a parent, that moment when the child strays, is the moment where we MUST show them more than ever, that we are here, that we understand — even if we really would rather they didn’t do the thing they were doing. Right now, we are running through fog, and we don’t know how -or where — our children will emerge on the other side.
The legacy of 9/11 was one of people coming together to bond in sadness, anger, and patriotism. Yet — 20 years later — the nation is more divided, more fractured, and more scared. We are in another inflection point, and the legacy here is what and how we teach our children — we do not tell them that we will stray from them — we show them how to manage their complicated, and often contradicting emotions. We show them how to be both in disappointment and relief, and in excitement and fear.
We show them how to hold both hope for the future, and awareness in their present.
We, who lived 9/11/01, still see the shadow of those buildings, and feel those who were lost. May them (and in a way, also we) of COVID-19, grow closer together to heal the world.
In 20 years, when another 14 year old asks, “wait, what was COVID-19?” — may we be able to say that it was what taught us to be brave, to have compassion, and to be kind.
