25 Years Later

I was a freshman in high school on September 11, 2001.

Like millions of Americans, my family was glued to the television for days. Information came in bits and pieces. We watched the towers fall over and over. We watched firefighters dig through the rubble. We watched walls and fences in New York City covered with photographs of the missing. We’d never seen anything like it.

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And we watched our country try to make sense of something that, only days before, would have seemed unimaginable.

For my generation, there is a before September 11 and an after. We were old enough to understand that something terrible had happened, but we were too young to understand just how much that day, and everything that came after it, would shape the world we’d grow up in.

Eventually, the images on television changed. The breaking-news banners became reports from Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Afghanistan again. The nightly news became a running account of IEDs and battles and American casualties. Places like Kabul, Kandahar, Baghdad, and Fallujah became familiar names.

Now, we watched flag-draped coffins come home. Grieving families at Arlington. We watched people only a few years older than us leave for war. And then we became old enough to be the ones going.

The kids sitting in classrooms on September 11 graduated high school while our country was still at war. Some went to college. Some went to service academies. Some enlisted. Some became military spouses. Some lost friends, siblings, parents. Some came home with injuries everyone could see. Many came home carrying ones we couldn’t and still can’t.

Sure, September 11 changed our foreign policy and the way we traveled, but for my generation, it fundamentally shaped the way we understood the world.

We saw extraordinary courage modeled right in front of us, and what a privilege it was. Firefighters climbed the stairs of the World Trade Center towers while everyone else was trying to get out. Police officers, EMTs, and soon, service members walked straight into the hell of collapsing buildings and, later, war.

We also saw what this country can look like when we remember that we belong to one another. In the days after September 11, Americans showed up. We donated blood. We checked on our neighbors. We flew flags with a deep, deep pride in our nation. For a moment, the things that divided us seemed much smaller than what we shared as Americans.

The years that followed taught us harder lessons, ones I still hold close. Wars are much easier to begin than to end. Decisions made in Washington eventually land on the shoulders of real people. And if we’re going to ask Americans to fight for this country, we’d better be damn sure it’s necessary.

I thought about all of this at an event this week, where I happened to be set up next to an Army recruiting table. Throughout the day, I watched young people stop and talk to the recruiters. Most of them have no memory of September 11. Some weren’t even alive when it happened.

And yet, 25 years later, young Americans are still raising their hands to serve. First responders are still answering the call. People are still choosing service, knowing what it can ask of them.

I was 13 years old on September 11, 2001. 25 years later, I understand it a little better.

My generation grew up on September 11. We grew up with the wars that followed it. We saw incredible courage and sacrifice, and we learned what those sacrifices cost because some of us raised our right hands and took an oath knowing we might be asked to give our lives for this country.

We should remember all of it. And we should remember that the unity Americans found in one of our darkest moments is something we shouldn’t need another tragedy to rediscover.

What matters now is what we choose to carry forward.

Wishing everyone a meaningful day of remembrance.

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