An Obligatory 9/11 post

While taking a shower this morning I remembered my Grandmother, still wrapping my head around her no longer being around but didn't remember it was 9/11 until I got to work and saw the flags at half-mast. I don't have anything more significant to say about this day than anyone else; this day belongs to us all and yet it belongs to none of us. No one has the singular 9/11 experience, even those who lost loved ones are part of something bigger in their lonely community of grief. We have all lived out the ripples of that day in our own little ways. Some of us were there, some of knew people who where there. Some who were in junior high are now serving around the world supporting the decisions made by our leaders in the aftermath. For many of us far far away from it all, the terror was in the uncertainty of what might be coming next and in the mild hysteria, gas lines, and Armageddon grocery shopping that followed. My personal story is unremarkable but my incredulity at how quickly a day's priorities, worries, and frustrations can be reordered lingers.

When I started working at the Pentagon about a year after 9/11, I was amazed at how quickly they had restored the wounded side and standing in the yellow glow of the memorial chapel, it was easily the quietest place in the entire building. During my time there, I met a woman who took one of the shuttles that run between the Pentagon and some of the offices in Crystal City and Rosslyn on 9/11, leaving minutes before the attack and even saw the plane cross the highway before it hit. Amazingly, planes still regularly fly right over the Pentagon and you can sit in the courtyard in the center of the building (nicknamed Ground Zero long before 9/11) as their shadows pass over you.



note: The title of this post--specifically the choice to use the word 'obligatory' is not meant to convey glibness about remembrance of the day, rather to convey my inner chagrin at even posting something 9/11 related because a part of me resists having anything to say about a day that defies definition and in which I found myself, gratefully like most of the country, merely an observer. My post 9/11 tangential connections to the events of that day (e.g. working at the Pentagon) are equivalent to taking a picture with Dan Aykroyd. There is folly in imbuing the encounter with significance. Or, on a lighter note, like the Dr. Evil rap where he says he knows Jay-Z and then admits he only saw him in a restaurant. And on an even lighter note, a very tongue-in-cheek (and explicit) version of some of feelings I had that day as a (former) member of the Armed Forces itching to get deployed somewhere I could help this never happen again. We have A LOT to work on but America rocks.