9/11

What's your 9/11 memory. I remember growing up in a world without war. The children of my generation where allow a peaceful life. Sure we saw then ends of the cold war, we watched on tv as the wall came down, but were too young to understand it. We didn't have to live through Vietnam like our parents or world wars like our grandparents. We've seen bomb shelters, but didn't understand them. We grew up before the internet, and world connections. We were suppose to be the generation with no war. We felt safe, very little to protest. Being a yippee was more about music and smoking pot than having a way of life to protest against. Then the impossible happened, we were attacked on our own soil. Our way of life changed, and that of our children. 9/11 happen. I remember my boyfriend at the time driving me to school and hearing the new on the radio. It was confused and I didn't understand what was going on. The news on the radio was not something I'd grown up equipped to understand. My initial understand was that we were under attack and a plane landed at the pentagon. I couldn't understand in all my 21 years, what was going on. To me it seemed like the impossible happened. I didn't understand at all that planes had been hijacked and flown into the world trade center. I went to class being scared and confused. Until sitting in my economic anthropology class, and later my philosophy where I finally figured out what happened. Or as much of what happened as I'll ever understand. Then they closed the University of Minnesota, and I remember wandering around campus not really sure what to do next. This world I lived in seemed to come crashing down around me. I went to work next because it wasn't far from where I lived, and the just watched everything unfold on tv over and over again. Now the generation that gre w up with out any understand of war, besides what we learned in school, had come smack in the face with a global reality. It wasn't the case that there were no wars being fought while we grew up, just that we never were forced to be a part of it. Here we were in our mid and early 20ies forced to deal with the idea that there were people out there who hated us, solely based on where/how we grew up.

Such a shocking transition to the lives we look back on in our 30ies where friends and family have fought and died for our safety. That fateful day ten years ago still seems much like a bad dream. All the details come back like flashbacks in a movie, every moment playing in slow motion. Our world was forever changed that day, and that of our children. Our children don't get to grow up in a world with out war. They have to be strong enough to watch their mothers and fathers fight for them. I don't really know which is a better world thinking back, I do know that I'm eternally both grateful and proud of all those who fought to try and make this world a safer place. In this ten year anniversary of 9/11. To remember all that was lost, and to say thank you for the strength and courage of the american military. Ten years ago tomorrow I learn what it really meant to say, All gave some and some gave all. For that I thank you.....