All my life, I’d heard that Americans all know where they were when they heard President Kennedy got killed. I don’t. Kennedy was the first president I remember being aware of, and for all I knew, it was normal for them to get shot. I was four.
I grew up in the shadow of the baby boom. While technically a part of it, those of us born at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties grew up against the backdrop of anti-war protests. We wore peace sign patches on our jeans while riding our bikes. Civil rights marches could be seen in black and white on the nightly news, but then we went downstairs (I lived in a New York City apt.) in time for the evening ice cream truck, playing tag and Spud while waiting. The Summer of Love was the Summer of Camp for us.
By the time I was old enough to participate, it was over. Disco and the cocaine-fueled culture it spawned (I lived in Miami as a teen) had replaced anything resembling a social conscience. The best one could do for the world was recycle, a radical concept in the late 70s. I did attend an anti-nuclear march on Washington. To me, marching on Washington is a quintessential part of the American experience. Or the state legislature, if you can’t get to Washington. By the time the “Let’s not go to war in Iraq,” marches took place, I was too busy to go, and nobody in power was listening anyway. My older daughter attended with a friend’s family.
So anyway, I never understood all the comments about “Everyone knows where they were when they heard Kennedy got assassinated,” until 9/11/01. I know exactly where I was on 9/11. My life was super busy then. Kurt and I had a coffeehouse with a cafe and bakery, and live music. We also had two school age children. He and I switched off working at the coffeehouse. Because I usually opened, I rarely had any time to myself. I got home in time for the kids to come home. I drove to gymnastics and Taekwondo. I also did taekwondo. If I was going to have to be there anyway, I wanted to participate. I fixed dinner. Basically, I worked and then I was Mom, except for Tuesday and Wednesday, the only days that Kurt opened and I closed. 9/11 one of those 2 mornings.
I had the house to myself. I was emailing photos from our Okracoke Island vacation to some of my cousins in NYC when Kurt called and asked if I had heard that a plane hit the World Trade Center. I waited for the punch line, but there wasn’t one. I turned on the TV, and then another plane flew into the second tower.
What I remember most is the peace and quiet and the shock, not just that morning, but in the month that followed. All the businesses in our old-timey downtown neighborhood hung red white and blue wreaths, us included. People were nice to each other, (unless you were middle eastern.) In fact, we saw a few customers I had never seen before, women dressed in Muslim garb. I think somebody must have told them they’d be welcome at the Hyphen in those uncertain days. I was flattered.
It never lasts. After a while, people were jerks again. They cut each other off in traffic. They took advantage of each other as though nothing happened, and that’s sad. I think the biggest honor we can do the people who died that day is to relive the golden moment when we were shocked into keeping our priorities straight, and remember that we are a community.
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