It started out as a day like any other day, a day like all the days before–at least like all the days for almost sixty years before–had started out.
It started out with us feeling safe, at home in America.
In Southwest Pennsylvania, it started out as an idyllic late summer day with sunshine and puffy clouds. As I was about to leave for work, I discovered that two of my dogs–Duke, the Pointer mix who’d shown up on our back porch just a few months before full of buckshot, and Harry the Old English Sheepdog rescue from some years ago–had decided to go walkabout and take a hike, I knew not where.
So I called the hospital and let them know I needed to take some personal time to retrieve the dogs, and that I’d probably be in later, and I set off down the road in the usual direction of such things.
No dice. After looking and calling for about an hour, I started the trudge back home, not terribly worried, but hoping to find that they’d returned before me.
As I passed my neighbor (he’s about a-quarter-of-a-mile down the road from me), I heard some shouting and a bit of a hullabaloo from the guys who were putting a new roof on. They’d got the radio playing loudly, one of my least-favorite morning talk-show hosts, and he was ranting about buildings and airplanes, and terrorist attacks. Since this guy was–and remains–a ranter on an Olympic scale, I just thought “there he goes again,” and kept walking. Until he cut to an actual reporter, and I heard the news.
And I raced home and turned on the television, just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower.
The rest of the day, for me–a person uninvolved in–and unable to do anything about–the fast-moving and horrific events unfolding all over the Eastern United States, is a combination of a blur and a few very specific memories:
- I never made it to work.
- For some reason, one of my first impulses was to gather up all the gasoline canisters in the tractor shed, throw them into the car, drive to the nearest gas station, and fill them up.
- I remember watching the towers crumble to the ground, and my sense of utter disbelief that such a thing could be happening, as I watched thousands of people flee the area and thousands of brave firefighters and police run towards the unfolding, unthinkable, human catastrophe.
- I remember seeing–in real time–the unimaginable sight of Americans, desperate to escape the inferno, jumping from a thousand feet in the air and sailing down to a quick death on the ground, because–if they were going to die anyway–that was their preferred alternative. (Footage which is rarely shown today, because such a thing might ‘upset’ those who weren’t even born the day it happened and so–I guess–best pretend it didn’t.)
- I remember the landline phone system (no cell phone for me at the time) utterly failing, overwhelmed and on its knees. I couldn’t get hold of Mr. Right, who was teaching at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. I couldn’t call my folks in the UK. Nothing seemed to work except the television and the radio, both of which showed or described scene after scene of utter devastation, tragedy, and horror.
- I remember–finally–an email that got through from my brother, demanding to know if I was OK. It seems that when my parents heard that one of the planes had crashed in a field in Southwest Pennsylvania (a large area comprising twelve counties) they’d assumed it must have been my field in Washington County. Gradually, and then suddenly, all family members made contact, although it was a day or two before we could actually speak to each other.
- Eventually, I even heard from Mr. Right. He wasn’t sure when he’d make it home. Pittsburgh–like many cities–had pretty much locked down, and getting in and out was difficult, if not impossible. He’d decided to stay at the university and make himself available to the students, many of whom were young, scared, separated from their families and loved ones, and trying to make sense of what was happening. He finally got home about 3AM the following morning, having done his best to create a safe space for them (in the days when a “safe space” was actually needed and important, and not just a room full of blankets and stuffed animals intended to soothe a person whose feelings had been hurt because he overheard a conversation between two other people about something other than himself, but where one of them used a ‘triggering’ word).
- And I remember this:
Yes, on that day, it took a bit of bravery to stand on the Capitol steps and sing “God Bless America.”
I remember.
I’ll never forget.
It started out as a day like any other day, a day like all the days before–at least like all the days for almost sixty years before–had started out.
It started out with us feeling safe, at home in America.
Almost sixty years before September 11, 2001, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. And Americans no longer felt safe in their own country.
Fewer than four years later, the Empire of Japan lay in ruins, obliterated and humiliated by the United States of America as it signed the declaration of unconditional capitulation and surrender (seventy-eight years ago last week):
We, acting by command of and in behalf of the Emperor of Japan…hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of all Japanese armed forces and all armed forces under Japanese control wherever situated.
And America felt safe again.
Was that the end of the story? Of course not. All you have to do is look at the position Japan occupies in the world today, and at its cordial relations with the West, to see that history marches on, and that nothing is ever written in stone, at the same time–perhaps–that folks are required to remember who actually won the last round.
What the Instrument of Surrender, signed on the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945 did was give closure to all those who’d been victimized and harmed by the Empire of the Sun, and validation and honor to all those who’d lain their hearts and their lives on the line to combat the evil perpetrated in its name.
No such closure exists for the victims of 9/11. Twenty-two years on, the West is wallowing in self-loathing, self-recrimination, and–it seems–unseemly adoration of any culture that isn’t ours, and we have to listen to the empty words that Mark (Thoroughly Modern) Milley–Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff–mouths about victory and “those who’ve laid their lives on the line, fighting for their country.” Sorry, but it all rings rather hollow, given that Milley (a Trump appointee) and his ilk have spent the last few years diminishing the contributions, and disrespecting the motives, of that segment of the US population (rural southern Whites) who have signed up in the greatest numbers, and paid the greatest price when it comes to fighting for their country. (I pass over the unforgiveable and reprehensible withdrawal from Afghanistan in which the government of the United States betrayed not only the citizens of a country it had promised to protect, but also its own Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, together with its sworn allies, in the form of its cowardly and disorganized withdrawal. As usual, the frontline troops behaved with honor, and thirteen of them paid the ultimate price for the foolhardiness and perfidy of their “leaders.” For shame.)
It started out as a day like any other day, a day like all the days before–at least like all the days for almost sixty years before–had started out.
It started out with us feeling safe, at home in America.
And yet, since September 11, 2001, 8,035 days ago, there’s not been a single “day like all the days before,” a day that started out with us feeling safe, at home in America.
Don’t believe me? Just visit an airport.
Sad.
For all my friends and acquaintances who died on that day, and all my friends and acquaintances in the military, political, journalism, social media–and other–fields who have done their best–often at great cost–to redress the balance at home and abroad. I don’t forget you either.
P.S. The dogs showed up at some point. They were fine.
