I suppose 9/11 must’ve began like any other day. I must’ve woken up, and one of my parents must’ve driven my sister and me to school, because that’s where we ended up.
I was sitting in Mrs. Gilvary’s third grade class when one of the teacher’s assistants walked in. “One of the towers of the World Trade Center just fell,” she must’ve said, or something like that. And whatever routine we were following must’ve stopped, because more important things were going on in the world.
“Who has a family member who works in the World Trade Center?” I remember Mrs. Gilvary asking. I jealously watched as a couple of kids raised their hands. Show offs, I thought.
A little later I while I was using the restroom on the upper floor of the school building I found a few girls huddled around the small window along the wall of the last stall. I joined them as watched as a large cloud of black smoke drifted from the two burning buildings just over thirty miles away from my small school located in Hollis, NY. At that time the news from earlier became a little more real. But I wasn’t upset or scared. This is actually a bit uncomfortable for me to admit, but at that time I felt important and excited. Something interesting was happening just a few miles away and now I could report this smoke back to my classmates.
As an eight-year-old child, 9/11 was not as traumatic an event for me as it must’ve been for the adults of the time. I didn’t understand the magnitude of the situation, I didn’t understand that thousands of people had either died jumping out of windows, died with the collapse towers, or were dying under the pounds of rubble. I didn’t understand that the country was under attack. All I knew was that something different and important was going on. And when I came home and saw that the coverage of the towers took over channels five, eleven, and thirteen, I thought: but Sailor Moon was supposed to be on Kids WB today.
After 9/11, my parents’ perception of New York changed a little. They came here for opportunity, for a new start. Not for terrorists attacks. My father actually works in Manhattan; thankfully he wasn’t too near the towers the day of but after the events of 9/11 my mother wanted him to stop working there. For the people who lived in New York, 9/11 could not be any more real. And after that day, for a short time, New York wasn’t as glamorous, not as amazing. Instead it was a place with a red dot on its head. ‘Of course they’d bomb New York, we’re the center of everything.’ ‘We had it coming to us, didn’t we?’ ‘No! Why? I don’t understand why they did this!’
Flipping through the channels for the next few days I saw multiple pictures and videos of the same footage of the towers. And then the more creative ones: pictures of missing people, crying people, phone calls between those on the plane and their families. When the events of what was happening became too real, I’d turn off the television, because I had that option, because even though I lived in New York, since I was young and not directly affected by the events, it was that easy for me to forget. I just had to hit the power button. That’s how I imagine it must have been for the rest of America.
OK that was a large generalization. But I honestly feel that those who lived in Nowheresville, Idaho and Invisibletown, Wisconsin did not feel the same terror as those in New York. I’m not saying they were not affected but, I’m saying that if they didn’t have family members or friends who worked in the World Trade Center their worries did not run as far as the ones of the victims’ families. Perhaps their fears were as easily extinguished as mine: with a click of a button.
There were those who used the fear and pain they experienced to create works of art like pictures and plays. Creating art is never easy. But from experience, the easiest way to create a “good” piece of art is to utilize the emotion from a painful experience. But are all artworks that portray painful/horrific experiences good? No.
And I have to honestly say that I was apathetic to the 9/11 Peace Quilt. As I said creating art is not easy, and while it is easier to turn a painful experience into art, a work of art that portrays an event experienced by thousands of people will have different responses to it, as each of those individuals experienced the event a different way. An on duty fireman who worked in the area will always see the event differently than the six-year-old boy who lost his mother in the south tower. But I have negative feelings toward the Peace Quilt for a different reason.
This is going to sound a bit harsh but the Peace Quilt was put together by a bunch of children who were handed crayons and markers and told to draw their feelings of 9/11. Looking at the messages and drawings, I could see what they were trying to do, as the message was cut out and pasted in plain sight, but the whole thing did not seem genuine. How much were these children really directly affected? From what I read and saw, the pictures and messages were nothing short of what I experienced, which was honestly not much.
9/11 will always mean different things to different individuals. As I child, I was not directly affected, but there were those (adults and children) who lost friends and family that day. While there have been artistic portrayals of the event, not all have been successful, because not all are genuine, not all reach out emotionally to their audiences.
