Still Life (in your pants)

I was in second grade when 9/11 happened. There are three moments I remember from that day: The first, in the morning at school when my teacher sat us all in a circle on the ground and told us what happened. She told us to pray for those people. I don't think any of my classmates really understood what had happened; we just knew it was serious. We were quiet and solemn-faced.

The second, when I came home, my parents were watching the video of the towers burning on the computer. They turned it off soon, though, because it made my mother too sad.

All that day, my mom tried calling her sister, my aunt, who worked in New York near the World Trade Center. I remember my mother's relief when she finally got through to her that night and heard that she was fine. The subway system was a mess, I remember my mom telling me, and it took my aunt a long time to get home.

I don't think I had a clue about what was happening. I guess I knew that it was a tragedy and that bad people had crashed planes into a building, but that was it. At seven years old, I responded more to the adults' reactions than to any numbers I was told. I doubt I connected the image of the burning buildings to the images of khaki uniforms and desert that I saw months later.

I don't know if I can pass judgment on Osama bin Laden's death. Even though I lived through 9/11, I feel so far removed from the event and the war thereafter. I only realized the full impact of the event last year in reading the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The father of the boy in the story died in 9/11, and I felt his pain more than I ever did when I was seven.

I heard today that the president doesn't want the photographs to be released. I support his decision. I can't imagine much good coming from it; I have images of an altered picture becoming the next internet sensation or being pasted onto protester signs, onto “patriotic” signs. This seems a little pessimistic, maybe, but this is what I imagine happening. And that's not to mention how the other side will use the pictures, making him into a martyr.

Sometimes talking about all this makes me feel so small. The biggest thing on my mind today is my SAT test. I feel a little ignorant, too, for not knowing more about the events in the Middle East though I was alive, albeit young, for much of it. And I feel especially sheltered for not feeling something about it all.