I remember sitting in a circle cross legged on the blue carpet of Ms. Marsh’s third grade classroom. I remember being so confused, kids were going home one after another, the number of children remaining was dwindling to a mere ten or twelve. All I could think was, Is this some kind of holiday? Where’s my mom? No one could tell us what was going on, they simply said that some parents wanted to be with their kids that day. Again, all I could think was, I want to be with my mom every day. When I got home from school that day, I remember my father was watching the news in the den. This struck me as really odd for him to be watching tv in the den during the middle of the day for he typically only chose to watch tv out there when he was watching a tv show we weren’t allowed to, like Sex in the City. I remember my mom sitting at the dining room table, tears were falling silently down her face. When I entered the room, she grabbed me, and she held me very close.
That day was one of confusion and disorientation; it was only in the days after that that I realized what was actually going on. It was everywhere, all over the radio, the tv, the news. My dad was watching the coverage twenty four seven, he couldn’t stop. I began to think that the coverage would never stop, and that people would never go back to being happy again. That the death toll would keep climbing and the tears would keep falling.. The entire country was in a perpetual state of mourning; a state of mourning that seemed eternal.
You would think that after such an event that people would flock towards the suburbs and New York City would experience a major shift in population, its massive eight million people fighting to get out. But that didn’t happen. People stayed, despite the fear, despite the terrible loss it suffered, people stayed in New York City. I guess that makes a statement about New Yorkers. While 9/11, I believe, impacted New Yorkers more strongly than any other people in the country, they still stuck around. People around the country heard about it, but New Yorkers lived…no…survived 9/11. The loss, the suffering, the violence. But still, They didn’t care that they were living in the core of what had happened, they weren’t going to move. Typical stubborn New Yorkers, eh?
Today, New York City is still as much of a tourist hub as ever, so one could argue that 9/11 didn’t change how people viewed it much, except that NYC will always and eternally be associated with 9/11. But 9/11 doesn’t stop people from looking at NYC as some kind of fantasy. It’s just what naturally happens in time I guess. When someone mentions Hawaii, the first thing someone thinks of is sandy beaches, mojitos, and sexy cabana boys. Not an attack on American soil that launched us into the second World War. Maybe in time, New York will be able to dissociate with this tragedy, but maybe that in and of itself is a tragedy.
You can’t have something like this happen and forget about it. We need it as a reminder to ourselves that we as a country can survive anything, that we as people can survive anything, and that we as New Yorkers can survive anything. That is why I think that every piece if art centered around 9/11 is a good thing, whether it be movies, plays, books, sculptures, paintings, whatever. Each one is decidedly different in portraying the event, and that is what we need because everyone had an extremely different experience on that day. We need these artworks so that 9/11 doesn’t just become another chapter in the history books, so that it continues to be a living breathing thing, so that it remains an everlasting reminder of a day when we finally forgot our differences and united as one.
