Remembering 9/11

We all have a story. I was walking in from recess. Second grade. The teachers appeared to be watching an action movie in the lounge. I was jealous that we had to go outside while the teachers were watching movies. That childishness disappeared as soon as Mrs. Andringa walked into the classroom, the yellow room where the stars and stripes hung over the door, and told us that bad people had done an evil thing. She wouldn’t tell us anything more except that our parents would fill us in when they picked us up at the end of the day. I wasn’t old enough to know much, but I remember enough of the world before to comprehend some of what we lost that day and have never recovered.

I received a collection of stories of 9/11 heroism later that year, either for a birthday or Christmas, and pored over it for weeks, absorbing the sacrifices of my countrymen and mourning, in my own little seven-year-old way, with and for their families. I’ve loved the U.S. viscerally ever since, and miss, profoundly, the unity of purpose we shared in the months following. That initial flag-raising at Ground Zero, with the firefighters grimacing into the sun through their sweat and the rubble dust, is indelible . . . it was us.

Our leaders rose to the occasion:

And our greats, like the incomparable Ray Charles, consoled us.

God bless the USA.