Yahoo! is asking Americans how September 11 changed them. Below is an account from a reader.
September 11, 2001: I had just move to Vermont’s capital, Montpelier. I remember it was an amazing September morning, sunny and warm, blue skies, and a very slight warm breeze. I was outside of Mountain Herbals Cafe waiting for it to open. I had a job interview that morning. I was early. I sat on a bench across from the cafe to enjoy the morning and to write some poetry (because on a morning like that there is nothing else you can do but enjoy the day).
A local writer named Mike struck up a conversation with me about the cafe, and writing. Apparently Mike knew everybody, and everybody knew Mike. I was fortunate Mike chose that morning to take a walk. A city driver pulled and told us about someone bombing the Twin Towers in New York.
It was the kind of news you are sad about, and figure you will catch up on in the nightly news. “Yep, bad news Mike, don’t know how many are hurt or killed yet, it just happened.”
The driver moved on, and Mike and I continued our conversation. It could not have been more than 3 min later when the door to the bar across the street swung open. The owner leaned out “Mike, you gotta get in here and see this!…And you” he said pointing a dish towel at me ” come in here too.”
My first thought “what is a bar doing open this early in the morning”? But then I was scared, I knew this was serious. I came in just after the second plane hit, and stayed until the second tower fell. I just knew that everything was going to be different. Nothing was going to be the same as it was the day before. There were 5 other people in the bar, 3 men and 2 women including myself. We were all silent, our mouths open, gasping at every scream, or spattered bloody face we saw.
The reports you hear on TV these days from that day have been contorted, twisted, and candy glazed. They are not what the people and reporters on the ground were saying. They are not the images I saw on that bar TV.
I was surprised at the feelings and thoughts I was experiencing. I was almost glad that we as Americans were engaging in world pain and suffering, maybe now we would be more sensitive to wars, massacres, terrorism that take place in other countries. Maybe we would stop thinking we did not need to pay attention to the suffering of millions of other people on this planet. I was angry that someone had targeted innocent people, horrified at what the people at ground zero had to try and live through, had to die in.
I saw men and women jumping to their deaths and I cried them, their families, and the fear they must have felt. What would I have chosen? I was sad for the people on the airplanes. I think most of us have a fear of flying, could I ever get on a plane again? “What now”? I remember thinking? “What now”?
After the 2 other planes went down near the capital in D.C., Montpelier being a capital at a local state began shutting down roads, and blocking most exits and entrances. I spent most of my day trying to gauge how deep we were under attack, and if it was over. Should I leave the cities for a while, and spend a few days at the secluded lake house a friend owned? Or should I do something — give blood, go to NY and help people; but what could I do?
I have seen all of the changes 9/11 has brought about. Airline restrictions, security alerts, profiling. I was pulled over in Tennessee that year and had my car searched because the officer was pulling over random vehicles to search for illegal weapons. “Terrorists like to use unsuspecting people like yourself to transport equipment,” he explained.
Mostly I have seen America engaged in an endless war, a declining economy, a faithless, jobless America. Who just want their old pre September 11th life back where they can pick up their family members up at the gate of the airport? Where they don’t have to hear about the billions of dollars being spent on war, where their friends, and loved ones aren’t sent to the Middle East? A country where they can afford gas for their cars, and their homes? A country that they can say they are proud of when they travel internationally?
What we never realized before September 11th is that we cannot be those people forever. That American dream was never sustainable. We have not been those people for a long time. I see America struggling with our new identity still trying to cling to the past hoping that the “good old days will come again, any moment we can get back to normal.”
But that is not going to happen. I still don’t know what is in store for us, I am scared because I see success slipping further and further away. No end to a war, no relief financially. No solutions just more troubles, more problems for us all. I am also hopeful because I have a lot to be thankful for, I see the world as half full, and not half empty.