During the course of one’s life, there come moments that are forever remembered in the most minute detail. Where you were, what you were wearing, who you were with, colors, smells, sounds. They all can be recalled as if time had slowed and you had lived an eternity in that moment.
For some, the moment is intensely personal and not something that another person could share, except in the most abstract way - the instant in which their first born was placed in their arms, or when the love of their life drew their final breath.
Then there are other moments which we share across the span of humanity, the jolt of horror and grief or the flash of hope and optimism too great to be contained by any one being.
The relatively short history of America is rife with these moments: the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent unconditional surrender of the forces who perpetrated that attack, the earnest and pacifistic speech given by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his violent and senseless assassination, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the fall of the Berlin Wall.
My moment is 10:03 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001. I was 18 years old and attending a junior college in my hometown, where nothing interesting ever happened. I had been in the library since 7:30 a.m. and was running late for my English class. At the time, I was oblivious to the people standing in clumps along the sidewalk speaking in hushed whispers and hugging one another.
In my memories now, the shock and disbelief seems to scream from their glassy-eyed faces. I flew into class and sank into my seat, thankful that the professor wasn’t in yet. The television was on and no one was talking. I looked at the screen to see smoke pouring from both World Trade Center towers. I opened my mouth to ask someone what was going on, but before I had the time to make a sound, the south tower collapsed into the street right in front of our eyes.
The news station broadcasters went berserk and my classmates jumped from their desks. I could hear people screaming in the hallways. My professor rushed into the room, telling us to remain calm and that the campus was on lock down.
No one could leave.
I still had no clue what exactly had happened, so I yelled my question over the din of the other student’s voices. The room fell silent. There was an incredulous look on every face as they turned in my direction.
“Someone attacked the World Trade Center towers. They flew airplanes into them,” said my professor. “They hit the Pentagon too.”
Time ground to a halt. It felt like it took a year for her words to sink in. My eyelids closed and opened at an infinitesimal rate. The universe around me shrank down until there was only room left for a single thought.
Two of my paternal uncles were active duty Marines at the time and both lived near D.C. I couldn’t remember where they worked. In the time between the beats of my heart, a slideshow of information began to slowly pass through my mind.
“Where are they stationed?”
I must have asked the question out loud, but my ears didn’t hear it. When the forward progression of time returned to normal, my professor had her hand on my arm and was asking me who I was talking about.
I remember everything about her to this day. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater with a silver brooch fastened to it. Her hair was white and was pinned up in a French roll. I’m sure that if I were to ever smell her cloying perfume again, I would recognize it immediately. From that second, my memory returned to normal. But nothing else did.
I raced to my mother’s office building where we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get in touch with my uncles. It seemed like the world had come to a screeching halt. Phone lines were busy or just not ringing and airports across the entire nation were grounded. Being a child of the technological age, I had never seen anything like it. There were precious few cars on the road and it seemed like a blanket has settled over the town, silencing everyone. Every television I came across was a window to the World Trade Center Towers, every channel broadcasting the devastation of that day to a nation holding its breath in terror and waiting for yet another shoe to drop.
Before the end of the day, my family got the news that my uncles were fine. But even that small piece of relief did little to ease the shock of what had happened.
I don’t think anyone in my household slept that night. We all watched the news for days, as firefighters, policemen and miraculously ordinary civilians searched frantically for survivors and loved ones amid the wreckage.
Then I saw something that came to define both the tragedy and spirit of Ground Zero for me. Three firemen, two security guards and two men in the tattered remnants of business clothes pulled a black-suited man from the rubble. The news station broadcasters spoke in barely audible tones as they rushed the man to emergency medical workers.
He was alive.
Where the silence of that moment had been deafening, the cheers of the newsroom was doubly so. It was as if through this one survivor, America had found the scrap of hope it had been waiting for so desperately. The men who pulled him out were weeping, hugging one another as they sagged bodily under the exhaustion and pressure of the past hours. Covered in the dust from the rubble, only the clothes they wore distinguished them from one another.
Race disappeared, political and personal rivalries were laid aside and everyone stood together; worked together toward a common goal. There were no labels. We were one people. In that moment, we were American and nothing else.
During these glimpses of what makes humans both a terrible and wonderful people, when the dividing lines we assign to ourselves blur into nothingness, we have the opportunity to find our true selves and our true spirit.
The American spirit wears no label of religion, race, sexuality or political agenda. There is only the spirit of what makes us human and gives us the choice of strength or weakness, compassion or cruelty, forgiveness or perpetual blame.
I have witnessed that in our darkest hours, when we are face-to-face with the consequences of true hatred, we will see our purest light. I know that the goodness of humanity lives strong in the hearts of the American people.
It was Napoleon Bonaparte who said that there are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. I believe, as he did, that in the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.
As we approach the 9th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and remember those lost on that day, let us not forget the people we have the potential to be. We can refuse to allow doubt, hatred and intolerance harden our hearts. We can be a strong, compassionate people of one spirit – the American spirit.