September 11, 2001
I had almost forgotten today was September 11th until someone mentioned that they couldn't believe seven years have already passed.
On September 11, 2001, I was 20 years old. Two weeks earlier I had moved to Italy to begin my third year of college as an exchange student in Padua along with a group of 23 or so from the University of California. We had begun orientation lessons and were living altogether in a dormitory in a bad part of town.
Each afternoon, I would walk to an internet cafe to check my e-mail. That summer, my baseball team (San Francisco Giants) were contending for a playoff spot. Their star player, Barry Bonds, was poised to break the single-season record for home runs. Each day, I would go and see if Barry had hit another.
I went to the San Francisco Chronicle website, something I still do to this day. The headline read, in ordinary font, "Plane strikes World Trade Center". My immediate thought was that it had to have been an accident, even though terrorists bombed the complex in 1993.
I tried to visit the New York Times website, but it wouldn't load. This was odd. A moment later, the proprietor of the cafe tapped me on the shoulder. He knew I was American. "Look at the TV," he said.
I sat transfixed, noticing that the weather in New York seemed perfect. How could a pilot have done this?
Then the second plane hit.
At that moment, without having been told, I realized that this was no accident; it was an attack. What was truly terrifying was that nobody knew what else was coming. Then the Pentagon was struck. Then the fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
I thought of my friends in New York, despairing. Were they downtown that morning? Hopefully, they'd have been safely uptown, going to class or sleeping in.
I ran back to the dormitory and caught the bulk of the group halfway there. We crammed into a cafe that had a TV. We were shaken, too shocked to speak. One girl was in hysterics. Her sister was in New York, and her call wouldn't go through.
There we were; two dozen American college students, full of adventure and looking forward to a year in Italy. We sat there, a bunch of scared kids, completely homesick.
I called my parents in California. They were just waking up. "Turn on the TV," I said, my voice quavering.
Two days later, I saw a video taken on street level, maybe taken by a French guy. I don't remember now. What got me wasn't the collapsed buildings, or the hole in the Pentagon, or the implications of what had happened. It was a video of people running, in terror, down the streets of New York. We're often told somehow that New Yorkers (or San Franciscans, or Chicagoans, or whatever) aren't "real" Americans; that somehow those of us living in the big cities are out-of-touch elitists.
But these were real Americans, of all colors, shapes and sizes, backgrounds and lifestyles. And all were running, screaming, in the same direction; no one knew what was in store. This is what hit me the hardest.
Life did go on. I finished the year in Italy and returned to California and got my degree. Three years later, I found myself in China. I'm still here.
To think of what has transpired since, in the world, it is difficult to remember what it was like after 9/11. I've been back to New York twice, and each time I paid a visit to the site now universally known as "Ground Zero". For our generation, the terrorist attacks are our touchstone; much as the Kennedy assassination was for my parents and the attack on Pearl Harbor was for my grandparents.
Not long ago, I watched a stupid movie called Cloverfield; it was about a giant monster attacking New York. The movie was meant to be hip, or gimmicky, or interesting, but it just made me sick. Too many memories.
So. If any of my readers out there have memories, stories, or anything else to share, please do.
