America’s Age of Terror has reached majority.
Today is 9/11/2019. Eighteen years ago today I was up early watching the Today Show from my hotel room in California. Just the previous day I had flown out at 8:00am United flight from Boston to San Francisco on September 10.
August 25 had been my birthday. Just prior to that I had suffered the miscarriage of my frist baby. I was in California to receive my annual performance review at the company headquarters. The day I arrived my bosses, who knew of my pregnancy, were extra kind to me.
Then the planes hit. The whole world changed.
The state of private sorrow entered into a union of nationwide grieving.
The skies were silent save for birds.
Places of worship saw the return of prodigals, if only for a while.
There were moments of retaliation and racism. The fruit of terror is fear, after all.
Terror has reached majority—but so have the Americans born on that day. It is our duty to teach those who have reached this age of agency about the event they could not possibly remember.
Zina in Wonderland 