I’m a Child of the Bush Years
Reflections on the 14th Anniversary of 9/11 from a Small Town Girl
I’m a child of the Bush years. I was 11 when 9/11 happened. I was a young girl just learning about things like Republican and Democrats, how Norway had month long vacations, cell structure, and my dad had just purchased 1984, A Brave New World, the Good Earth, Catcher in the Rye, and other books, trying to bolster my public school education. My brain was ripe.
Looking back, I realize what an impact that day had on me. I was suddenly aware of a bigger world than the farm and the scrap yard. I watched fighter jets fly over my house. America seemed like a real concept suddenly. “Oh. America. I see.” I thought.
Muslims, you say? I loved the Egyptian family who ran the mini mart. What? They did this? I don’t believe it. Small town finger pointing inspired a sense of renouncement in my little mind. Yet, I thought “Fighter jets. America.” I wanted whatever “war” was because they said it would make us safer and more secure. Security. What is that?
Then, I was 12-going-on-13 when we invaded Iraq. I remember watching Baghdad light up on TV, imagining myself as myself — a child, but with bombs falling on her house. I cried. I had a big imagination as a girl (and now) so the sensation of the daydream haunts me.
If I felt so insecure, how did those children feel? I could never blame them for that feeling. Someone probably told them “war because…” just as they told me “war because…”
I wanted to be in “National Security,” whatever that was. I wanted to prevent the world, and maybe myself, from feeling like that again.
Until I was about 21, I turned all of my attention to studying the world, in a weird unconscious reaction to 9/11. I studied Arabic. I helped a girls’ school in Afghanistan. I studied in Egypt and Spain. I contemplated military service. As soon as I could drive, I took my sister to Shanksville (40 min from my home), to see how 5 years later, there were still handmade memorials adorning the site. I lived in post-conflict zones. I hitch-hiked with soldiers who felt numb from the process. I saw how the world had a currency of pain and they were just trading it across borders, some with rockets, men and tanks, but others with love, writing and theater.
Looking at the past 14 years, I see security is a nuanced thing. Now I crave to understand not National Security in a vacuum, but mental security, community security, security to feel and to speak without judgement. Security is as internal as it is external.
Today as I remember the event that sparked my adolescence and the war that marred it, I think a new way about security. I hope that the next 14 years bring about a world more sensitive to nuanced notions of what security means. That family, connection, caring, and inclusion… as well as clear boundaries that are not judgments so much as they are limits, are important to feeling safe.
In the meantime, my prayers go out to all of the souls of victims and their families. New York, my beautiful, resilient New York, is my new home for the foreseeable future and I absolutely love you with all of my heart.
