Remembrance

It was the fall semester of my senior year of college. Tuesday. I was early to my 10:00 class that day, and I sat doing the crossword puzzle, waiting for the professor to arrive for my favorite class -- WWII: The European Home Front, ironically. I had woken up, gotten ready, and headed to campus without turning on the television or radio. The few early people sitting in the small classroom were equally clueless to what was going on. My professor rushed in calling to someone to turn on the television. We watched the second plane hit. Live.

We sat in silence, horrified, but still not completely believing that it was actually happening.

After we had watched the coverage for a while, my professor, bless her, turned off the television and tried to lecture, but the class began to shrink as cell phones rang and people left the classroom in tears. After all, The University of Michigan hosted a huge number of students from the East Coast.

It was surreal. People were walking around campus in a daze, clutching their phones. It took me a while to get a hold of my college boyfriend, who was working at the Renaissance Center that day - the tallest building in Detroit and the center of the automobile industry - and I was scared. Everywhere, people were crying. Classes were cancelled for the rest of the day, but I didn't want to be alone, so I headed to the museum and sat with my friends and coworkers as we gathered around an old radio. I didn't go to the vigil on the Diag that evening, though I now wish I had. My roommate and I sat, transfixed, in front of the television instead, crying and just trying to understand what was happening and why.

And now, five years later, I didn't want to turn on the television this morning. I was determined to avoid all coverage if possible. But as I walked to the metro this morning, I paused to watch workers lower all of the flags around Union Station to half mast. I got a paper, and the front page was a picture of the wreath laying at Ground Zero last night. While at work, I closed my eyes and said a little prayer at 8:46 a.m. It's inescapable, and that's okay. I just wonder where we draw the line between remembrance and masochism. I know that if I watch anything tonight, I will end up crying and feeling miserable.

I was lucky enough to watch from afar. I was still in Ann Arbor, not DC. I didn't know a single soul who died in the attacks. I now know some near-misses, like my supervisor at one of my old internships who was working at the Pentagon at the time, but that's really not the same.

I know that September 11 will be something I will never forget, just as my parents will forever remember their whereabouts when JFK was shot, I will remember that I was sitting in class, doing a crossword, and completely oblivious.

I grew up a lot that day - though for four years I studied war and its effects on innocent civilians, it had never hit home. It wasn't the Blitz, but it was close. If I was able to recapture that naivety, I would.