I was asleep. Then I got up and took a shower. It was the second week of classes at BYU, my freshman year.
I came back to my room and my roommate informed me that “the Pakistanis are bombing us.” I didn’t believe her. I suggested that maybe it was Palestinians.
We didn’t have a TV in our room yet, or at least we hadn’t hooked it up yet. My computer was still in the mail. We logged on to MSNBC on my roommate’s computer and kept hitting the reload button. The second plane hit.
There were long delays. We switched on NPR just as the first tower fell.
We went to devotional at 11. We didn’t know what to think. Or feel.
The world is a different place now. I look at my beautiful, innocent son and realize that he’ll never understand how that day changed our world. He won’t understand what that meant to me, just as we will never understand what V-E day or V-J day meant. Or how November 22, 1963 defined a generation.
In a large way, I still don’t know what to think or feel. I didn’t know anyone there, or even close. The pain that New Yorkers still feel is almost as distant to me as those days forty and sixty years ago.
Poignant (and apolitical) accounts from a few people far more affected than I:
- John Moylan (by Steve Friedman)
- Laura Wattenburg
No politics here either. Never forget—but always move forward.