WSJ Article The Children of 9/11 Grow Up

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WSJ Article " The Children of 9/11 Grow Up

College students talk about how the attack shaped their lives.

It is eight years since 9/11, and here is an unexpected stage of grief: fear

that the ache will go away. I don't suppose it ever will, but grieving has

gradations, and " horror " becomes " absorbed sadness. " Life moves on, and wants to

move on, which is painful for those who will not forget and cannot be comforted.

Part of the spookiness of life, part of its power to disorient us, is not only

that people die, that they slip below the waves, but that the waves close above

them so quickly, the sea so quickly looks the same.

I've been thinking about those who were children on 9/11, not little ones who

were shielded but those who were 10 and 12, old enough to understand that

something dreadful had happened but young enough still to be in childhood. A

young man who was 14 the day of the attacks told me recently that there's an

unspoken taboo among the young people of New York: They don't talk about it,

ever. They don't want to say, " Oh boo hoo, it was awful. " They don't want to

dwell. They shrug it off when it comes up. They change the subject.

This week, in a conversation with college students at an eastern university, I

brought it up. Seven students politely shared some of their memories. I invited

them to tell me more the next morning, and was surprised when six of the seven

showed up. This is what I learned:

They've been marked by 9/11 more than they know. It was their first moment of

historical consciousness. Before that day, they didn't know what history was;

after that day, they knew they were in it.

It was a life-splitting event. Before it they were carefree, after they were

careful. A 20-year-old junior told me that after 9/11, " a backpack on a subway

was no longer a backpack, " and a crowded theater was " a source for concern. "

Every one of them used the word " bubble " : the protected bubble of their

childhood " popped. " And all of them said they spent 9/11 and the days after

glued to the television, watching over and over again the footage—the north

tower being hit by the plane, the fireball. The video of 9/11 has firmly and

ineradicably entered their brains. Which is to say their first visual memory of

America, or their first media memory, was of its towers falling down.

I'd never fully realized this: 9/11 was for America's kids exactly what Nov. 22,

1963, was for their parents and uncles and aunts. They were at school. Suddenly

there were rumors in the hall and teachers speaking in hushed tones. You passed

an open classroom and saw a teacher sobbing. Then the principal came on the

public-address system and said something very bad had happened. Shocked parents

began to pick kids up. Everyone went home and watched TV all day, and the next.

Simon, a 20-year-old college junior, was a 12-year-old seventh-grader at a

public school in Baltimore. He said: " It's first-period science, and the teacher

next door, who was known to play jokes on other teachers, comes in completely

stone-faced and says a plane has hit the World Trade Center, and no one believes

him. " Simon didn't know what to believe but remembered reading that in 1945 a

plane had struck the Empire State Building, and " the building stayed up, " so he

didn't worry too much.

" At lunch time the vice principal comes up and he explains that two planes had

hit the World Trade Center and one had hit the Pentagon and the World Trade

Center was gone, and I never—when you have your mouth agape it's never for

anything important, but I remember having my mouth agape for a minute or two in

complete and utter shock. I went to my art period and I remember my art teacher

sitting there with her hands on her face just bawling, she was so frightened. My

mom picked me up, and I remember walking with her, and I'm saying 'This is Pearl

Harbor.' "

Nine-eleven, he felt, changed everything for his generation. " It completely

destroyed our sense of invincibility—maybe that's not the right word. I would

say it made everything real to a 12-year-old. It showed the world could be a

dangerous place when for my generation that was never the case. My generation

had no Soviet Union, no war against fascism, we never had any threats. I was

born when the Berlin Wall came down. It destroyed the sense of carefree

innocence that we had. "

tte, also 20 and a junior, was in eighth grade in Great Falls, Va. " I think

the kids were shocked, " she said. " The major question was how could this happen,

who would do that—like, how does something so crazy happen? What I had is a

sense that it was going to be one of those days of which 30 years down the road,

people would ask me, What were you doing on that day, where were you on

9/11?—that my children would ask me. And so I set myself to remembering the

details. "

I told her that it is interesting to me that no great art has yet come from

9/11. The reason may be that adults absorbed what had happened, and because we

had absorbed it, we did not have to transmute it into art. Maybe when you are

still absorbing, or cannot absorb, that's when art happens. Maybe your

generation will do it, I said.

She considered this. " There's always the odds that something much more horrible

will happen that will really shake us out of our torpor, that will wake us up, "

she said.

The attack was not only an American event. Robbie, an 18-year-old freshman, was

10 and in primary school in England. " We were near the end of school. There were

murmurs from teachers about something happening. I remember going back home, and

my mum had both televisions on with different news channels. I remember the

tower and the pillar of smoke. The big pillar of smoke was very vivid to me, and

my mother trying to explain the seriousness of it. I think 9/11 brought us bang

slap into the 21st century. I remember when the millennium came people said 'new

time, new world,' but 9/11 was the 'new time, new world.' I understood it was

something big, something that changed the world. "

Then he told me that after we had talked the previous evening, he'd had a dream.

" I was back in my old school in England, and in front of me I could see the city

of Bristol, nothing distinct, but big towers, big buildings. And I could see

them crumbling and falling. There was a collective fear, not just from myself

but amongst everyone in the dream. I remember calling in the dream my mum, and

saying 'Are you safe, are you safe?' I think this perhaps shows that after 9/11

.. . . as a small child you felt safe, but after 9/11, I don't think I personally

will ever feel 100% safe. . . . I think the dream demonstrates—I think the dream

contained my hidden feelings, my consciousness. "

He remembered after 9/11 those who rose up to fight terrorism. Even as a child

he was moved by them. There are always in history so many such people, he said.

It is always the great reason for hope.

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