The day remains so vivid in our collective memories: the rush to turn on the television, the sudden reverse commute, the dash to collect the kids from school or daycare, the worry about family members who had traveled to New York or Washington or were studying there, the astounding sight of panicked Chicagoans streaming out of Loop skyscrapers and wondering where they would be safe.
Those of us who were still kids on Sept. 11, 2001, remember adult confusion and fear for absent parents; those of us already in the workplace had other worries, not the least of which was what to tell our children.
Some of us remember the eerie silence in the skies that afternoon as arrivals and departures at O’Hare ceased. We suddenly realized how the sounds of a city can be a comfort.
And we all still can recall the improbably sunny weather. Chicago’s most beautiful month.
Chicago that day was wondering if it, too, was intended to be an al-Qaida target, a question that lingered for several years thereafter, especially after former President George W. Bush suggested it was so, when he visited the city in 2010: “And people forget that the Sears Tower was a target, a genuine target,” he was heard to say, thanks to a WLS microphone left open, “and the mayor responded and his people responded brilliantly to the threats, so this is an interesting example of federal, state and local cooperation.”
Federal, state and local cooperation. Not a concept in ascendency at present.
Precisely what was meant by “target” was debated long after Bush’s words although it now feels moot. Chicago was attacked because America as a nation was attacked: New York; Arlington County, Virginia; Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Blue and red states were not yet a thing. Especially not on that day.
It’s axiomatic that people living through moments of seismic historical change do not realize it at the time. Nor can they see narrative beginnings and endings. Those fighting the American Revolution did not know they would win and forge a new country, and yet we now are hardwired to see it as the start of something, not an event where everything hung in the balance.
Similarly, many of the numerous articles we read this week have defined the events of Sept. 11, 2001, as singular and definitive: a dividing line, say, or the end of an era of innocence or the last gasp of true American unity or the beginning of a war that begat more wars.
But a truer recollection of the experience of actually living through that day means understanding that we didn’t see it as a single day to be remembered but potentially as the first locus of several such attacks. That persisted throughout that fall. We have often wondered what would have happened if the so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid, had been successful in his attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight that following December. He came close. A small shift in circumstances might have have yet further changed the trajectory of global history.
In the end, though, perhaps Sept. 11 is not best honored by these grander narratives, these ex post facto analyses.
Perhaps we should all just focus on the lives (many in their prime) that were lost, the bravery of the first responders, the admirable responses of some elected officials who found their voice as they never had before or did so again.
As journalists, we often are wary of people pushing the importance of anniversaries, which can be used as ways to drum up interest in something long-established and wheezing. They often are marketing tools, malleable to make a political point. Those who care deeply about one aspect of something or another often take charge of their memory, not necessarily reflecting the wretched, real-time ambivalence of the original experience. Perhaps the best way to remember 9/11 is to say we just did not understand.
Anything. All was covered in dust.
But then it’s also worth noting that this will be the last time for a while 9/11 gets this kind of attention. Twenty-six, 27, 28, 29 years will seem less important. Come to think of it, many Americans probably won’t think this way again about 9/11 until 2051, which will come sooner than we think. For those of us still here.
We also can imagine a time when whatever media organizations that exist in 2101 will trot out those who actually remember that day as curiosities. Maybe there will be far more of us than we now think, if medical advances continue.
Who knows how their memories will be contextualized by whatever agents of artificial intelligence are doing the contextualizing?
All we can do now is acknowledge the overwhelming loss of office workers, waiters, electricians, traders, firefighters ascending a building and never climbing back down, and remember that tomorrow never is a certainty.
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