Healed wounds, forgotten scars, but the threat remains

I remember it started like any other day. T-shirt and jeans, Cheerios and banana. Slam backpack into locker, drag body into Biology, slump into seat. Just another dreaded day at Chestertown Middle.

I remember waking from my daze and thinking Nate Bachman was the luckiest kid in the world when the front office called into our classroom and said his mom was there to pick him up. When the loudspeaker asked for Kristin Bushby ten minutes later, I remember wishing that I too, by some stroke of luck, had a dentist appointment that day as she must have had. And still the third time that voice boomed down upon my classroom, I remember praying, just praying that my name was the next to be called. And then it was.

I remember grabbing my books and suddenly regretting my plea for the dentist as Dr. Hickman would surely find a cavity and Language Arts was far better than novocaine. But as I leaped down the stairwell and rounded the corner towards the front office, these trivial, adolescent worries came to an abrupt halt when I saw the lobby filled with hysterical parents and bewildered teens.

I was violently embraced by my own mother, who frantically tried to explain to me what had happened, although I really only understood "airplane," "skyscraper," "airplane," "smoke," "war."

I remember coming home and it was barely 9 a.m. An entire day off from school should be thrilling for an eighth grader, but I'd left the house just over an hour ago and now it seemed so different. My grandmother, a WWII WAC veteran, clutched her chest as she declared that this was far more frightening than hiding in a London tube station during The Blitz. I didn't understand.

My family, three generations of Americans born and bred, huddled around the television set and watched. We watched as human beings leaped from windows, 70 floors above sidewalk, some hand in hand. We watched as onlookers wept and strangers held each other in their arms. We watched as smoke churned and billowed through the sky like a hellish chimney. We watched as the buildings collapsed.

And we listened to the screams of New York City. Of families, newlyweds, new friends, old friends. Of newscasters, policemen, firefighters. Of grandparents, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers clutching their children. Of your heart and mine.

We watched and listened as these people ran from the debris that swallowed Lower Manhattan whole. Rubble and dust filled the city streets, iron and steel turned to smoke and thin air.

And the newspapers exclaimed: DEVASTATION. INFAMY. WAR. And the President vowed: VENGEANCE. PROSECUTION. PUNISHMENT. And in the face of disaster, the people were promised: hope.

I remember the rallying of the country, the coming together of a nation. I remember the thousands upon thousands of American flags, the sprawling of the stars and the stripes on every surface, every heart. I remember the heroic call to duty, the patriotic spirit that overwhelmed our youth who were ready to fight back. I remember our gung-ho president who swore that justice would be served, who vowed to "hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts." I remember it all, yet I forget.

Eight years later, those flags have slowly come down. Gradually we have learned to resent the war whose original purpose has become muddled and has cost so many additional lives. We have eased gently back into our comfort zone. America, the untouchable. America, the watchdog. America, the military and economic powerhouse (or so we thought).

Millions of tourists now visit New York City without so much as a stop to Ground Zero or buying a NYPD t-shirt. As often as we like to say "9/11" or "Never Forget!" or "Support our Troops," we cannot deny that some essence of that original unification, that rallying American spirit, has faded. We cannot deny that we are all a little guilty of moving on, of consigning to oblivion.

Many people would like to denounce such a claim and argue back, ‘You're heartless, I would never forget!' But I do not wish to place blame or allege countrywide ignorance – I too am guilty of carrying on with my life, more often than not letting those events escape my memory completely. A constant reminder could be a national plague. How would we ever triumph, how could we regain our strength?

But what of the younger generations? What of those who were too young to remember the tears forming in their grandmother's face? Too young to have themselves lost a family member, a friend. Too young to have seen a nation crumble but also watch it rebuild and prevail. Does it all become just a story? Fiction? Does it become past, although its repercussions continually shape the present and future?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize winning author and survivor of the Russian Gulag prisons, wrote, "In keeping silent about evil...we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future."

This past week, Najibullah Zazi, a New York resident since childhood, was arrested for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. The 24-year-old traveled to Pakistan last year to receive terrorism training and, upon his return to the States, purchased bomb-building supplies. Many officials are calling this the most serious terrorist plot since the September 11 attacks. Apparently, terrorist groups have not forgotten. If anything, their hatred has only grown.

Now more than ever America is in need of union. We are a nation hurt by economic downturn, a nation stumbling with conflict over health care reform, a nation with so much potential and patriotic hope. Now is the time to come together and stand against external factors that attempt to break our spirit.

Together, we must show that we have not forgotten. We must show that America has not faltered, that we stand on solid ground and that we, stronger than ever, will never again allow such evil to shake our soil. Together, we must talk, we must teach, we must remember.