Tomorrow is September 11, 2021. The 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.
Every year, this anniversary reminds me how “un-American” I am. You see, for my family, 9/11 didn’t happen in the morning hours. There were no quiet skies, reverent silences or coming together as a country. We were part of the 3% of American nationals living overseas at the time.
My husband called me from London, shortly before the kids would be arriving home from school. He knew I never watched the news. He simply said, “Turn on the TV. Now. I love you,” and hung up.
I clearly remember sitting on the floor in my apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland, watching the replays, and the ensuing chaos. No one, least of all the TV announcers, knew what was happening. The kids trickled through the door one at a time and joined me. We watched in silence. Stunned.
Our children were enrolled in local, not international, schools, so the next morning the older two went off to classes as usual. I walked my almost 8-year-old to school. She stood with me for a few minutes before quietly joining her friends. I waited for the bell to ring, reluctant to leave. I could clearly hear some of the mothers speaking in accented English, agreeing that “the US deserved it.” It felt intentional. And isolating. Only two women came to speak to me directly, one, a Frenchwoman who remains my friend to this day, the other an Iranian refugee. For our family, there was no communal recognition of the tragedy until a few days later when the American members of our church gathered.
In short order, we looked ahead to American Thanksgiving in November. We had plans to celebrate with Jeff’s family in the USVI. Our airline tickets, already purchased, included connecting flights through NYC. We thought about canceling, but in the end decided to go. The deployment of US Marshalls on flights reassured us. The morning of our departing flight we surveyed our fellow passengers, attempting to identify the protectors we’d been assigned for the journey. On our return flight we had a long layover, prompting Jeff to suggest we take a train in to the city, to Ground Zero.
The image of the gaping hole, surrounded by debris and destruction, is burned into my brain, along with the acrid smell of the smoke still pouring from the earth’s wound into the air around us. We walked across the street to St. Paul’s Chapel, miraculously undamaged, to pray. The memorials and sentiments hid its surrounding fence, overflowing into the sanctuary where first responders involved in the cleanup flocked for sustenance on all levels.
We returned to life in Europe, thoroughly unprepared for the months of anti-American sentiment bubbling up around us. As the buildup to the Iraq war intensified, just 40 miles down the lake in Geneva, so too did the challenges our children faced as the only Americans at their schools. Dinner time discussions about US foreign policy and our role in the world became the norm. So did keeping our passports out of sight and choosing to speak French instead of English to each other when traveling. For me, “Proud to be an American” became, and still is, a sentence accompanied by asterisks and footnotes. Complicated.
I know many whose lives were turned upside down that fateful day. One took their dear friend to the airport in Boston, fretting about being late. If they’d been a little later, and their friend had missed the flight, his young kids wouldn’t have grown up without their dad. Another friend lost myriad work colleagues in one of the towers, his non-presence at that meeting a lucky twist for him. The list goes on – we all have our own stories about this fateful day.
I’ve had the opportunity to revisit the site several times over the years, watching its process of transformation. The first was with my youngest daughter and her Swiss friend in October 2006, when it was no longer filled with rubble, but still fenced off, and vacant. The next time I was there the rebuilt towers and memorials greeted us. As we watched the water wash over the sides of the fountains, cascading to the depths below, surrounded by the names of those who perished, the young man I was with nodded at the tourists surrounding us, their cameras clicking. It feels improper, he said, to take photos in such a sacred space – disrespectful of the dead. Last time I was there, in August 2018, my in-laws and I toured the museum. I couldn’t take in the entire place, the collective trauma and sorrow amassed within its walls overwhelmed my system.
Flags, banners and bumper stickers in the Boston area still proclaim: “Never forget 9/11.”
I’ve been wondering. What does it mean, in the context of trauma and tragedy, to “never forget?” Is it the same as “always remember?” I imagine many would agree they mean the same thing. I, however, would argue they are very different.
Re-member, with an intentional hyphen, is a word bodyworkers use as shorthand to describe the myriad healing processes of the BodyMindSpirit, from the physical macro-member limbs and micro-member cells through to the emotional, spiritual, mental and energetic parts that make us our own unique selves. At our essence, we’re a beautiful intertwined system that is always seeking equilibrium.
Re-membering, then, is a re-generative process, employing the dynamic forces of re-viewing, re-flecting, re-assessing, re-aligning and re-building.
On the other hand, to “never forget” carries within it a directive to hold on to the past. Energetically, that can keep us in a static state. We become stuck in old patterns, with no way forward, unable to adapt to changes in our environment or see new possibilities. This can easily lead to resentment and a continual need for revenge. We become entrenched, unbudging, like Dr. Seuss’ North-going and South-going Zax, while the world moves on, building highways around us.
Always remembering doesn’t mean we forget those we loved, those who sacrificed themselves for others, or those who died. It means we allow the past to grow with us, giving us the freedom to move forward, using our resources to deal with the challenges of today instead of yesterday.
May each one of us continue to re-member 9/11, tomorrow and always.
Thanks be to all that is, was, and ever shall be.
