9/11

It’s late at night and I’m up watching the CBS 9/11 documentary on TiVo.

I should start by saying that I’m proud that CBS and the affiliate I work for chose to air the film in its unedited form. I know there was a lot of pressure brought by certain groups not to air it. Airing it was the right thing to do.

But just because it’s the right thing to air, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to watch. As the horrific scenes of that day pass across my TV, I’m shocked by how raw my emotions are about that day, how close to the surface they still are, how little real healing there has been over the past 5 years.

I was in Prague on September 11th, 2001. Julie and I were on our honeymoon. We were shopping for some overpriced glass object when we heard someone speaking in broken English about the plane that knocked over the world trade towers. I actually chuckled to myself, thinking her English must not bee too good, “If she only knew what she just said.”

But we went outside and saw some people huddled around a tobacco shop listening very intently to a radio. That didn’t draw much of our attention, but we did hear President Bush say, “Today we have suffered a great national tragedy.” The term “great national tragedy” gets thrown around quite a bit, but we thought we’d go to an internet café later that night and investigate.

A few hours later, we clicked on a news site. Each paragraph was less believable than the one before it.

Julie asked, “Did you find out what this tragedy is?”

“Yes."

"What does it say?"

"It says a plane hit the Trade Towers in New York.”

“What?”

“It says a second plane hit another tower.”

“What kind of plane?”

“I don’t know… the towers collapsed.”

“What?”

“They’re gone. We were just there last week… It says a third plane hit the Pentagon.”

“What?”

“That’s what it says… a fourth plane… it crashed in Pennsylvania.”

“What?”

“That’s what it says… they shut down all air traffic in the US.”

“How do we get home?”

“I don’t know.”

We went back to our hotel and found the staff had placed a TV in our room so we could watch the coverage. Julie went to sleep after a few hours, but I stayed up most of the night watching CNN International and worrying that we were 7,000 miles from home on the first day of World War III.

About a week later, we landed back at LAX. There were National Guard soldiers in the terminals holding machine guns. Large tanks were stationed at the entrances to the airport, blocking all traffic except parking shuttles. Cars were covered with small American flags. We had been gone for two weeks, but we returned to a completely different country.

Most things in the US have gotten back to normal since 9/11, but watching this documentary tonight, I realize that I still hate the people who did this to our country. I hate the people who took the lives of innocent thousands. And I hate what their actions have unleashed in this country since that day. Terrorism is based on hate, and I know that hating these people merely plays into their hands. But I still hate them. I wish I was bigger than that. I’m not.

And every time I take off my shoes in an airport, I get a little angry again, remembering what we’ve lost. It’s not the convenience I miss, it’s the innocence. It’s that feeling that, even though I’m only in my 30s, perhaps my best days are already behind me. Perhaps history has already passed me by, and I’m already a grumpy old man, living in the past and grumbling about how things were so much better before the world changed.

Before the documentary ends, I’m interrupted by crying in the other room. It’s Nate. He’s hungry. I heat up a bottle for him and hold him in my arms as he sucks down some milk and drifts back to sleep. And as I look at him, I can only hope and pray that he can tolerate the fatally flawed world we've brought him into.

I hold him a little closer. He’s asleep now, and I can put him back in his bed. But I still want to hold him. On a dark day like this one, sometimes you just need to be with the people you love.