10 Years as an adult.
I could rehash my experiences from that Tuesday in Albuquerque, NM; far from New York, a city I've never been to. It's always interesting to lay down your tale and see how it has changed from whence you once told it. However this year really brought a new perspective to the anniversary.
It finally hit me that one day in the near future, Jessica and I will have to explain 9/11 to Darby. What we will say, I do not know. I know what crosses my mind today, but depending if he is 6 or 16 changes the story we will tell. I remember asking my Mom and Dad about the day JFK had died. The first time I asked them I was in Elementary - I just wanted to know where they were. The next time we talked about it I was just starting college and I wanted to know about how they felt.
I watched Nova's 'Engineering Ground Zero' last night and I am glad there is something to take the future generations to show them the emotional power of what happened... to bring the humanity back to what even for me, on some callous dispassionate level, was something that just happened on TV. That day was hard reconciling the imagery of a place I've never been to and only had seen in media vs. the true human story... Sort of like Pearl Harbor.
As a kid, I remember I was in first or second grade when on a chilly fall day our schools janitor, Andy, told me it was December 7th. I knew the date, I had to write in on my school work, so I looked at him blankly. "Its Pearl Harbor Day" he said. I asked him what that was and he explained, in an uneducated sort of way about Japanese Kamikaze's attacking America with airplanes and started World War II. At recess that day I ran around with my arms out pretending I was some Japanese Zero innocently dive bombing the play ground. Andy saw me and hung his head and laughed. I always thought he was amused but I've grown up to realize that was a gallows laugh.
I saw pictures in the encyclopedia sometime later of the listing USS Arizona, its antiquated masts and crows nest still attached at and angle and still... it was all no different then George Washington saying he couldn't tell a lie, Abe Lincoln freeing the slaves before attending a fateful play, or the latest episode of 'Today's Special' on Nickelodeon to a young mind. I knew the difference mentally between fact and fiction, but emotionally it was all the same.
Several years went by and when I was 10, I was lucky enough to go to Hawaii. I believe it was step mothers and Step-sisters first time there, so we did all the usual stuff the tourists do. We went to the Dole Pineapple processing plant, I got the worst sunburn of my life at the Waikiki beach, we drove around the Island to the North Shore, see the sights as we went. But I remember the day we went to Pearl Harbor.
The visitors center was a museum, nothing special about it. They had an old WWII submarine- The SS Seawolf permanently docked there and we toured that to my great pleasure. Then we got on the boat and took the small trip out to the odd white causeway out in the harbor. I knew what it was, I had already seen it in my books, but seeing a picture and actually going there was worlds and lifetimes apart.
The memorial straddles the sunken battleship, still along its harbor mooring. The next mooring over still in the harbor had the USS NEVADA visibly stenciled on it. You leave the boat and cross the filigreed covered causeway to the open portals looking out over the ship and the flag still flying from a mast attached to the ship. The rifle turrets were long ago removed and only the rusting rings of their base and the hull of the ship remain, just inches under the crystal clear water. It didn't strike me on that level we expect until I walked to the back of the causeway to the memorial wall. The names of the 2,402 dead were etched in marble in the shaded room. 1177 of those names were lost aboard the ship I was standing over. It finally hit. This wasn't some war relic that wasn't much to look at anymore, I was standing over the tomb of more than 1100 men, permanently sealed within rusting steel and pristine water. I didn't get teary, I hadn't known loss yet to be that empathetic, but I knew then what was lost and the impact made that day 47 years after the fact. It became a very much a real event in my life. I felt guilty for that cold December morning not 3 or 4 years before when I 'wished' to have been flying a Mitsubishi A6M Zero over Hawaii.
So I wonder now what that day will be like for our son as he grows up. When the kid who loves Star Wars and Transformers seemingly more than I ever did has to face that same reality. When planes exploding and buildings crumbling are not just a Michael Bay movie, but reality. Will he too be over the beautiful harbor in Hawaii? Will we be standing among 147 fullsize glass chairs and 19 child size chairs? Will we be standing among 400 maturing trees staring at 3000 names etched in bronze ringing a waterfall tumbling into the void? I don't know when or where that day will come. I feel sorry for this innocent ball of energy that one day it will be necessary. But even for those that were not yet born that awful Tuesday, remember they must.
It finally hit me that one day in the near future, Jessica and I will have to explain 9/11 to Darby. What we will say, I do not know. I know what crosses my mind today, but depending if he is 6 or 16 changes the story we will tell. I remember asking my Mom and Dad about the day JFK had died. The first time I asked them I was in Elementary - I just wanted to know where they were. The next time we talked about it I was just starting college and I wanted to know about how they felt.
I watched Nova's 'Engineering Ground Zero' last night and I am glad there is something to take the future generations to show them the emotional power of what happened... to bring the humanity back to what even for me, on some callous dispassionate level, was something that just happened on TV. That day was hard reconciling the imagery of a place I've never been to and only had seen in media vs. the true human story... Sort of like Pearl Harbor.
As a kid, I remember I was in first or second grade when on a chilly fall day our schools janitor, Andy, told me it was December 7th. I knew the date, I had to write in on my school work, so I looked at him blankly. "Its Pearl Harbor Day" he said. I asked him what that was and he explained, in an uneducated sort of way about Japanese Kamikaze's attacking America with airplanes and started World War II. At recess that day I ran around with my arms out pretending I was some Japanese Zero innocently dive bombing the play ground. Andy saw me and hung his head and laughed. I always thought he was amused but I've grown up to realize that was a gallows laugh.
I saw pictures in the encyclopedia sometime later of the listing USS Arizona, its antiquated masts and crows nest still attached at and angle and still... it was all no different then George Washington saying he couldn't tell a lie, Abe Lincoln freeing the slaves before attending a fateful play, or the latest episode of 'Today's Special' on Nickelodeon to a young mind. I knew the difference mentally between fact and fiction, but emotionally it was all the same.
Several years went by and when I was 10, I was lucky enough to go to Hawaii. I believe it was step mothers and Step-sisters first time there, so we did all the usual stuff the tourists do. We went to the Dole Pineapple processing plant, I got the worst sunburn of my life at the Waikiki beach, we drove around the Island to the North Shore, see the sights as we went. But I remember the day we went to Pearl Harbor.
The visitors center was a museum, nothing special about it. They had an old WWII submarine- The SS Seawolf permanently docked there and we toured that to my great pleasure. Then we got on the boat and took the small trip out to the odd white causeway out in the harbor. I knew what it was, I had already seen it in my books, but seeing a picture and actually going there was worlds and lifetimes apart.
The memorial straddles the sunken battleship, still along its harbor mooring. The next mooring over still in the harbor had the USS NEVADA visibly stenciled on it. You leave the boat and cross the filigreed covered causeway to the open portals looking out over the ship and the flag still flying from a mast attached to the ship. The rifle turrets were long ago removed and only the rusting rings of their base and the hull of the ship remain, just inches under the crystal clear water. It didn't strike me on that level we expect until I walked to the back of the causeway to the memorial wall. The names of the 2,402 dead were etched in marble in the shaded room. 1177 of those names were lost aboard the ship I was standing over. It finally hit. This wasn't some war relic that wasn't much to look at anymore, I was standing over the tomb of more than 1100 men, permanently sealed within rusting steel and pristine water. I didn't get teary, I hadn't known loss yet to be that empathetic, but I knew then what was lost and the impact made that day 47 years after the fact. It became a very much a real event in my life. I felt guilty for that cold December morning not 3 or 4 years before when I 'wished' to have been flying a Mitsubishi A6M Zero over Hawaii.
So I wonder now what that day will be like for our son as he grows up. When the kid who loves Star Wars and Transformers seemingly more than I ever did has to face that same reality. When planes exploding and buildings crumbling are not just a Michael Bay movie, but reality. Will he too be over the beautiful harbor in Hawaii? Will we be standing among 147 fullsize glass chairs and 19 child size chairs? Will we be standing among 400 maturing trees staring at 3000 names etched in bronze ringing a waterfall tumbling into the void? I don't know when or where that day will come. I feel sorry for this innocent ball of energy that one day it will be necessary. But even for those that were not yet born that awful Tuesday, remember they must.