Remembering nine-eleven.

I was in 7th grade on 9/11/01, just two days past my twelfth birthday. It was picture day and we were running a little late; my dad and I. He was the principal of Blackstock Junior High and I was just getting used to being a big kid, with classes and passing periods and homeroom and other such novelties.

At about seven-fifteen-ish we were in the car, listening to NPR, National Public Radio, like every morning. I was ignoring it maybe a little, but then I heard "...plane...crashed into the Pentagon..." I listened.

"Are they serious?" I asked my dad, thinking about that story we'd read in class about the Martian attack they'd broadcast on the radio some time in the distant past that had made everyone so afraid.

"I hope not," he said, and then I knew it probably was for real.

We lined up that morning for class and whispered about it urgently. A plane crashed into the Pentagon, I said. A plane crashed into the Pentagon on purpose, somebody else said. Someone said "Twin Towers" and someone else said "World Trade Center," and we were all kind of afraid.

In homeroom my teacher flicked on the tv, but it wasn't the morning bulletin like every day--it was my dad, the principal, in front of the blue screen with the American flag where they normally did the pledge. He explained what had happened, carefully, calmly. We had a moment of silence. I wasn't sad yet. I wasn't even properly shocked. I just don't think I was old enough to understand.

After that, our teacher turned on the news for a bit. There were fiery images of the towers falling. Now I was upset and a little scared, but still, not struck with an overwhelming sense of grief or anything so dramatic. I was twelve, it was sudden, and New York was far away to me.

School ended (a very subdued school day, really) and I went home--my mother and grandmother were glued to the TV, even so many hours later, watching the same footage I had seen, and new pictures too. They looked as upset as I had ever seen them. I was a little nauseous now, and a little more scared, and I think I might have gone to my room and stared off into space for a long time. Or my parents might have hugged me for a while. I can't really remember. I just remember not crying.

I didn't cry about it that day, or that month, or that year. I didn't cry at the moment of silence at the next year's anniversary. I didn't cry at the two year anniversary, when each of my teachers talked solemnly about it. I didn't cry three years later, when I watched a commemorative collage on television. I didn't cry four years later, when we were playing a home football game, and we played the national anthem with special care, honoring fireman and policemen and all of America.

I always felt guilty about not crying--like I should be very sad, people had died, our country was attacked, your teachers are crying...why aren't you? The fact was, I was just a kid. New York and skyscrapers and the Pentagon and Afghanistan and death and terrorism were as far away from my life as Ancient Greece or 1776 or integral calculus.

The first time I cried about it was not long ago--six months, give or take, not on an anniversary or a special day of any sort, just some evening when I was poking around on the internet watching clips of The Daily Show. I came upon the first thing they did after September 11th--a very serious monologue, striking because it was serious when of course all the other clips were comedy. Striking because the host, Stewart, usually so impishly cheerful and quick with the sarcasm, was looking so lost and close to tears. "The view from my apartment," he said, then his voice broke before he resumed, "used to be the World Trade Center. Now it's the Statue of Liberty. You...you can't beat that."

That's when I cried. It didn't matter that it was nearly five years too late, that it was just a goofy comedy show, that it was three o'clock in the morning and I was sitting on my bed browsing old tv clips. I finally got it. What a devastating, terrifying thing it was. How it must have affected so many people--the New Yorkers, the firemen, the families, my parents, everyone. How it had changed politics, life, everything. How inspiring it was that we had come through such a tough time, unified, looked to each other and our beliefs in freedom and democracy and liberty and truth and beauty and love and good.

I cried again this morning, just a little, when our principal did the obligatory 9-11 speech on the bulletin. I am a bit teary now as I write this. Apparently, after you grow up a little, you can't go back to not understanding.

That's all right. I would rather be sad then not know why everyone else is so sad.

I would rather look and acknowledge the settling dust of the Twin Towers, and see through blurry, teary eyes our graceful Lady Liberty.