Twenty years ago this week, terrorists attacked America.
Historians and others will long debate how much that attack changed America. But it definitely changed me. And now — even though the resulting war in Afghanistan has officially ended — I do not want to change back.
I was fortunate on 9/11. No one in my family or circle of friends was harmed that day, but even so there was nothing else to think or talk about. And as I discussed with my friends and family what it all meant, a pattern to my thinking emerged.
“Of course it’s terrible,” I said, “what happened to all the police officers and firefighters, dying like that, trying to rescue people. It’s horrendous, but at least they knew they were at risk.”
“Do you have something against heroes, Judy?”
“Of course not!” I replied. But I honestly could not identify with them. Who runs willingly towards danger? My thoughts kept returning to the civilians. “What about the secretaries, the middle managers, the receptionists, who thought they were going to work on just another Tuesday morning, and now they’re gone in a puff of smoke? What about their families? Where’s the support group for them?”
“It’s like you have an allergy to anyone in uniform.”
“That’s not true!” I said, denying hotly that I had anything against folks in uniformed service—right up until I realized that maybe I did. But why? I didn’t understand it, myself.
The flag gave me my clue.
As I put it up in front of my house, those sad September mornings, I realized that this was the first time in my life that it felt completely mine. Of course, I had grown up with it, pledging allegiance to it every morning in school and since then at the start of public events. But always before, in some little corner of my heart, I had always felt that it was “Their” flag: the flag of Kate Smith, the military, and Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee.” I wasn’t 100 percent sure that I belonged to it — or it to me.
Instead, it had always seemed that there were two groups in American public life: “Us” and “Them.” In my case, “We” were the students, the Vietnam War protesters, the kids in blue jeans. “They” were the military, the FBI, the police. Folks in uniform. We had rock ‘n’ roll music, they had the flag.
There was no middle ground — that’s one of the few things both sides agreed on. Even after Vietnam, there was still the Cold War, or the environment, or women’s rights. The issues might change, but the divide never did.
Until 9/11. From that day and for a few short weeks thereafter, everyone in this country rallied to New York’s side. From every nook and cranny of this enormous nation, people sent supplies and help and — especially — their love. Irrespective of what “side” either of us was on.
As I watched my flag take the breeze, something inside me suddenly melted. That feeling of being an “outsider” was gone—which is how I realized I had ever felt that way in the first place.
It’s like what happens when you’re driving, in a rainstorm so torrential that it feels like you’re the only car in the world, even on a crowded highway. The rain is pounding down, and your windshield wipers are on their fastest setting and still, even in daylight, you can barely see the taillights of the car right in front of you. You can barely think.
Then you’re beneath an overpass and for just a few moments there is silence. You can see again! Your brain starts working. Only then do you realize what a strain you were under.
In that way, after 9/11 it was for me as if all the noise and commotion and, yes, pain of our national divisions went away and in their absence I was finally able to realize what a strain it had all actually been.
In that moment, I made a vow to myself: “I cannot go back to that discord. I won’t.” Even if it meant listening to people from the other side. Even if it meant caring about their issues and concerns, and not just my own.
It’s been hard to hold on to my decision, especially in the last few years, but I had resolved that we were all in this together—just as I resolved to hold on to that beautiful flag.
That’s why it hit me like a physical blow when on Jan. 6 I watched insurrectionists use that flag to attack the Capitol, punching in windows and bludgeoning police officers with it.
It seems that the rioters abandoned that flag in favor of ones honoring the old Confederacy, or white supremacists, or simply TRUMP.
I am still standing here, with my American flag. But I wonder — am I standing here alone?
