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9/11/21: Gazing into past and future
Every year on September 11, I return to the past.
I sit in my eighth grade ancient civilizations class, where a late student arrives with news about an errant plane flying into a New York City building. The teacher waves him off and commences to teach. In the next period, the students in my study hall stare blankly at the television mounted in the corner of the room displaying footage of the smoking, crumbling Twin Towers. Dazed, I stumble through an Algebra quiz. We learn that a plane has struck the Pentagon. Our principal gathers the entire school in the auditorium to deliver a message I hardly hear before he sends students home early under a sky so blue and beautiful it hurts.
I walk home alone down a silent street usually bustling with upper middle class life to find my father’s car in the driveway. We barely exchange a word when I come inside. He sits in the living room, wheelchair parked directly in front of the television set, playing an asynchronous loop of devastation. The towers smoke. People covered in thick layers of ash race through city streets. Planes strike high-rise buildings. Heroes descend on a smoking pile of rubble. The Pentagon is burning. The towers are leveled. Desperate people fall and leap.
Even hours later, the events do not have to be displayed in order; we already know them by heart.
