Sunday Essay: On September 11th, and the Generation It Didn’t Change

The original date of publication for this essay is Sunday, September 13th. It is the ninth of what’s intended to be a year’s worth of essays, published on Sundays. That intention, like everything, is subject to change.

Last week’s essay: On the Midwest

I was old enough when September 11th happened that I remember it clearly (though I can’t vouch for how accurate the memory is). Having been born in 1994, I was about to turn seven when my mom got the phone call from my grandma as I was getting ready for another day of second grade. We turned on the TV. We saw the smoke from the North Tower. We saw the fireball when the second plane hit the South Tower.

Being not-quite-seven at the time, I don’t have many memories before 9/11, especially pertaining to the world as a whole. I was too young to be aware of Bill Clinton’s impeachment. I didn’t realize how historic or divisive Bush v. Gore was. I understood nothing of Y2K. 9/11 is one of my first memories. It changed the world, and because it did, and because my early childhood coincided with a time of relative peace and prosperity in America, the years before it have since taken on an Eden-like sheen in my mind. There are two eras—one of peace, one of war. 9/11 divided them. 9/11 cast my world out of Eden.

But while 9/11 changed the world, it didn’t change me, per se. I was not-quite-seven. I wasn’t developed enough to be changed.

I’d imagine this is the case for others my age, and for Gen Z, which I’m told begins with those born in ‘96. 9/11 didn’t change us. It certainly shaped our world, casting its long pall over our childhoods, but it didn’t change us, and it certainly didn’t define us, because if one thing has defined Generation Z and the youngest of Millennials, like me, it’s been social media. And so I’ve wondered, if 9/11 didn’t change us, and 9/11 didn’t define us…what does it mean?

Beginning in high school, when I had access to Facebook and iTunes gift cards, the anniversary of 9/11 became somewhat ritualized in my life. I’d listen to Five for Fighting. I’d scroll a news feed void of anything but remembrance posts. When the tenth anniversary came along, bringing with it a rush of—well, content, for lack of a better word—I began watching the same two videos every year: BOATLIFT, the Tom Hanks-narrated documentary about the spontaneous, civilian-executed evacuation effort that took half a million people from the south end of Manhattan; and The Man in the Red Bandana, an ESPN feature about Welles Crowther, the Boston College lacrosse player-turned-equity trader who gave his life saving others rather than evacuating from the South Tower after it was hit. In college, the New Yorker article about Rick Rescorla was shared onto my news feed, and it joined the rotation, so that every year I’d have a little more than an hour set aside to watch, to read, to cry a little. To be inspired.

It’s striking that inspiration was such a key part of the remembering-9/11 experience for me. There was some grief, too, of course, but grief was not at the center. Inspiration was. I don’t know whether that means I was making 9/11 about myself. I don’t know if it matters.

9/11 did define New York for me, for a long time. When I first visited the city, for a game at the old Yankee Stadium in September of 2008, my family went and stood at Ground Zero, looking out over what was still a desolate expanse. In 2016, when I drove around the country, my lone afternoon in New York was spent entirely at the Memorial and in the new World Trade Center, with the exception of two Uber rides and a wait in Penn Station. I found Crowther and Rescorla’s names at the south pool. I read just about every word in the museum. I looked out from the top of the new building. I think it was gray outside. A dark kind of gray. I took the train back to New Jersey.

It was a pilgrimage of sorts, and it wasn’t the only one I took that year. I treat American history with some religiosity. I’ve prayed at times at both Washington and Lincoln’s tombs, in the way a Catholic might pray to saints. In July, I visited Gettysburg. Around Labor Day, I saw Plymouth Rock. I spent time on Navajo Nation. I hit something like ten national parks. I spent time in roughly half the forty or fifty largest American cities, and dozens of small towns. And on September 11th, the fifteenth anniversary of the September 11th, I attended the remembrance service in Shanksville at the Flight 93 National Memorial.

At Shanksville, inspiration was not primary, and grief was not primary. At Shanksville, it was gratitude. I’m grateful, of course, for the heroes in New York and Washington that day, and for the heroes everywhere. But given the likelihood the hijackers intended to hit the Capitol or the White House with that fourth flight, the stakes on Flight 93 were even more national in their scope. The civilians who died trying to take back the plane saved more than lives—and lives are a big thing to save. One hundred miles from Gettysburg, the passengers of Flight 93 did the same thing those young lives did at Gettysburg. They “gave their lives that (the) nation might live.” They consecrated that Pennsylvania ground.

Perhaps I discount that 2016 morning as I look back at September 11th now. I know I’m more jaded—or perhaps “disappointed” is the word—than I was in ‘16. This year, I haven’t watched the videos yet. I haven’t read the article. I don’t know if I will. This year, more of the remembrances rang hollow, some coming across as bait for social media brand engagement, some appearing to be attempts by power-hungry sects to co-opt tragedy in their crusade to justify and impose their worldview.

There’s something natural to this shift. The generation 9/11 didn’t change is growing larger. It’s multiple generations now, really. And even for the generation it did change, it’s been nearly twenty years. History erodes over time. It simplifies. Pieces remain. Pieces wash away. Eventually, it’s all gone.

The erosion happens differently for those who remember when the history happened. It happens at different paces, in different ways. 9/11 always was, and always will be, different for me than it was for a kid my age on Long Island at the time, just as it’s different for me than it is for someone my age who doesn’t have some odd sense of religion regarding America. It’s different across generations. It’s different across emotional bandwidths—both then and now.

New tragedies have occurred since 9/11. Tribes have splintered, divided, merged in new forms. Our memories of that day have doubtlessly faded. The grounds are healed—scarred, but healed, turned into pristine monuments to those who died.

I’ve heard time described before as a tapestry: something a four-dimensional being could look at from outside the way we look at objects across space, with different years and moments in different places on the cloth. Where we are, 9/11 does not mean what it once did, and it will grow more distant still. Those who remember 9/11 will themselves gradually die out. America will not last forever. Land will crumble into the sea. 9/11 will always be there, on the tapestry, but we—humanity—will not always see it, because we are not four-dimensional beings. For us, time only moves forward.

September 11th has turned into history, and as such, it has begun to erode. Just as we each one day will.

Next week’s essay: On Friday Night Lights, Symbiosis, and Perfection

Editor. Occasional blogger. Seen on Twitter, often in bursts: @StuartNMcGrath
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One thought on “Sunday Essay: On September 11th, and the Generation It Didn’t Change

  1. I didn’t begin reading these essays until Christmas time, and today is the first I’ve read this particular essay. I randomly went back and looked at a few of your earlier ones. This is a lovely insight: “One hundred miles from Gettysburg, the passengers of Flight 93 did the same thing those young lives did at Gettysburg. They “gave their lives that (the) nation might live.” They consecrated that Pennsylvania ground.” How fortunate you were to be there on that anniversary day…to experience the remembrances of those who were emotionally gutted by that plane crash, and yet soldiered on through their lives, with their memories of their loved ones.

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