Young Writers Society

I remember when I was a girl, the Traveling Wall Memorial came to a local park nearby, so my mom took us there to look at the wall. It was a wall with names of those who had been lost in the Vietnam War. And as she tries to explain this, she starts to cry. Like, ugly crying. I can hear her talking about the draft and her classmates and those who didn't make it home, but all of it was fragmented because she was crying so hard. So even though she was trying to explain what happened, all of it was disjointed and strange. And watching my mother, who is normally one of the most restrained and calm people I know, openly weeping like that was just... stunning.

Anyway, we read the names on the Memorial and went home, but my main impression of the whole event was that the Vietnam War was terrible because it made my mother cry.

Anyway. I grew up some. Then I became a teenager. My Grandma Rose came to visit for the summer, but she left on September 10, 2001. We went all the way through the terminal and waved at her while her airplane flew away. Life was good. And then... the very next day... September 11 happened.

And that was a terrible, terrible day. We watched the news over and over again until we could bear it no longer. My mom made corn muffins for us in a daze as a treat. To this day, corn muffins reminds me of September 11. It was awful and traumatizing in a way that I can't fully explain. It shook the nation in a way that is hard to understand. It was awful. I can't explain it. To this day, I try to avoid watching news footage or reading news footage of that day because I cannot do that without crying my eyes out. It's awful.

Anyway, a couple of years ago, I went to a local park with my kids and realized that they had a 9/11 memorial with some of the wreckage from the buildings. So I tried to explain to them what happened and why it was so important and why there was a bunch of twisted metal in the middle of a park with American flags surrounding it... and then I started weeping. And I don't think I was able to teach them anything important... everything they learned was so disjointed and strange because I just. couldn't. stop. crying.

But they knew that something important happened.

Anyway, yesterday was September 11 again. Usually, I try to avoid the news that day. But yesterday, they came home with questions and told us what they had learned from history and it was a bit of a shock because September 11 is now only history. There's probably only a couple of you who remember that day with any clarity, if at all. Some of you were probably not even born on that day. And so it probably would seem crazy if you saw some middle-aged woman (aka, me) weeping over it.

But it was a terrible day.