National tragedy made us all feel less safe
Of course the 9/11 commemorations have already started. In the
United States, we always start observing our big events weeks, if
not months, before the actual day. But it is time to look back at
the tragedy and what it’s meant for our country.
National tragedy made us all feel less safe
Of course the 9/11 commemorations have already started. In the United States, we always start observing our big events weeks, if not months, before the actual day. But it is time to look back at the tragedy and what it’s meant for our country.
Here on the West Coast, far away from where it all took place, our little fears and phobias that grew from 9/11 seem insignificant compared to what people in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania experienced. And yet we too were affected.
For me, the day of 9/11 started much like any other day. My sons were then at Aromas Elementary School, so the morning was the usual mad scramble of putting lunches together, placing books and homework in backpacks, and finding lost shoes. Ross was 11, Hunter was 8. School had just started the week before.
What was different about this particular morning was that I had an impulse to turn on the television set. Totally weird, because we did not watch TV on weekday mornings – there was just too much else to be done.
And yet something propelled me to pick up the remote and click. And immediately there were the dreadful images of the Twin Towers on fire.
My reaction was much like anyone else’s at this moment. First, disbelief. For just a second I wondered if I had somehow tuned into a movie channel. In the next split second, awareness that something awful was really happening, right now. Confusion. Sadness. Terror.
And then I didn’t know what to do. Should I take the boys to school? Would school be canceled? I called and got a busy signal, so I decided to take them anyway.
At the school, everything was oddly normal, as the line of cars dropped off students at the entrance. I wondered how many of them knew what had happened. I did run into one friend who was freaking out: “They’ll bomb the West Coast next,” she said darkly. “We should be prepared.”
Um, bombing Aromas? Don’t think so.
At that moment I realized that living in a small town that no one had ever heard of was probably a really good thing. Aromas would never be a target for terrorists.
We, and the majority of people across the country, would not have to worry about being bombed on this particular day or in the days to follow. But there is no doubt that there are lingering effects.
It was very hard for me to fly again after 9/11, as it was for many people. I was nervous about air travel even before the tragedy. However, I have gotten up the courage to do it several times and all has been well. I worry more about drunken pilots these days than I do about terrorists.
I can’t say that I worry about being around Middle Eastern people more than before – after all, Al Qaeda recruits from a number of different countries, not just the Middle East – and yet I do notice them more. I am more aware of the terrible divisions in that part of the world, the problems of women in those countries, and I think about all this much more than I used to.
I think for me, the most lasting after effect of 9/11 is the loss of the secure feeling that all Americans had about themselves and their country. As a people, we felt invincible – like nothing could stop us.
Then something did, and we will never get over it. Now, we look over our shoulders to see what’s coming up behind us. And I don’t see this changing any time soon.
Write to Kathy McKenzie at [email protected].
