9-11: Have We Learned Anything?

Do you remember where you were sixteen years ago, today?

I was at home. My husband, who was working from home, was told by a colleague to turn on the news, and we did. I remember standing there staring at the TV. I remember watching people run through dust and smoke, and wondering whether my cousin was in that New York mess (she was; but escaped before knowing what was happening). I remember feeling a visceral panic in my body; my veins pumping and my hands on my belly. I was pregnant with our first child.

The one clear thought I remember having - repeatedly - was 'what world have I brought you into'? It was a boundless, undefined fear.

My husband remembers not really believing the twin towers collapsing was real, and, once we accepted it had happened, he still didn't feel that it would have any direct impact on our lives. It did, as it turned out, probably contribute to the collapse of the company he worked for. He appeared home one day with a cardboard box of his office supplies, and job-free. And yet we moved on.

As time goes by we rehash and relive and re-imagine such traumas. It was the government. It was the terrorists. It was poor sad people jumping out of windows. It was heroes. America is awesome! We get used to such traumas, like old wounds whose scars are hardly noticeable but always there for looking at when we need a reason to grieve or to fear or to get angry. We wrap the traumas in layers of love and delight and forgiveness because if we didn't we couldn't carry on. Our children get older and come home telling us about nuclear proliferation and corporatocracy and desertification and we tell them Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows! Everything is Awesome! We usher our babies back out into the world with joy and hope because it would be horrible to do anything else.

And our children grow. And the scientists are projecting doom. And the climate changes just like they said it would do, so we write them off and find alternative science. And forests burn and earthquakes increase and storms like never before decimate our civilization. And war.

And the artists are projecting doom; even Hollywood is warning us at every turn, and Warner Bros plants fear in our hearts: Our whole civilization will go down if we don't break from the status quo and see past the shiny facade. And we and our kids go home in our SUV eating popcorn and singing Everything is Awesome!!!

We find leaders who wrap themselves in gold and shout Everything is AwesomeGreat!!! Trauma after trauma after trauma falls upon us, and our stomachs drop, and our dreams are pocked with terror, but we wrap it up in glitter and birthday parties and fun trips to the dollar store and fun family vacations because if we didn't we couldn't carry on.

Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows!! It would be horrible to do anything else.

Our children grow, until they're teens, and we pack their schedules and keep them locked up and safe, but at night they sit on their many devices scrolling past the news about shootings and election fraud and hurricanes and drought and thousands dying in flooding in ~*Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows*~ Where is Bangladesh? They share videos of themselves talking to their cats. Everything is Awesome!!!!

It has been sixteen years since the day that I held my tiny son in my womb and feared for his future. I've done everything I can imagine to raise my kids to be strong in the face of the world I brought them into, but every day I see the old scar and I poke at it, and I wonder if I did the right thing, and I don't know where we're going, at all. And I look into my children's eyes and I feel helpless. My mind has only so much capacity for grief and fear. At my house this morning, rain has cleared the smoke of this year's devastating wildfires, and through the screen of sun-speckled leaves outside my door I hear the neighbours getting on with their business.