What is Sunday Hiding?

This photo was taken on September 14, 2001. by slagheap.  See more images http://www.flickr.com/photos/slagheap/132112993/.

Very aware of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we deliberately set out to have a good day.  I didn't want to remember how 9/11 made me feel.

The memory of 9/11 was a surprisingly painful one.  Maybe that is the price I pay for being too stoic, too guarded.  The Sunday after, I was attending mass at St. Joseph's.  At the end of the service, we all stood and sang "God bless America."  I was so moved I was choked by tears.  I could not sing that day.

The memory sticks in my throat like a broken piece of concrete.  I am haunted by the images and the awareness that I was watching people die, live on tv.  Alive one minute, crushed the next.  Alive one minute and then in a last act of desperation plummeting to earth leaving the inferno behind.  Alive in an airplane seat, destroyed upon impact.

Yesterday, my daughter asked, "What was worse for the United States: Pearl Harbor or 9/11?"

Only seniors remember Pearl Harbor.  Japan attacked a military installation in an obvious act of war.  For that generation it was the defining moment.  It pierced the illusion of safety by attacking US soil on a calm December Sunday morning.  A morning saved for sleeping in, going to church, spending with family.

For those alive and aware in 1941, I wonder if the memory of that day was linked with the 9/11 attack. What would they choose as the worst?  Could they choose?  Can any of us choose?

So much of 9/11 is incomprehensible.  Terrorists attacked civilians who were just having an ordinary work day doing what they did every work day.  Out of a clear September sky, planes, often a symbol of freedom, technology and wealth, because deadly weapons.  The magic of television allowed too many of us to watch. Over and over it played the horrible scenes.  It burned into my brain.  On that day, I finally turned off the television and walked away. 

Yesterday, television tried to take us back again.  I refused to go.  I watched only a few minutes of a segment replaying the collapse of the first tower.  My body responded to the image with a chill and a shudder.  Seeing it again was that painful.  I walked away.  I answered my children's questions about this historic event as well as I could.  It has to be acknowledged.  It has to have some explanation but so much of  it defies explanation.  That is the nature of terror.  Terror became real that day.  It haunts my memories and it should.  The moment I no longer recognize terror, is the moment I am lost. 

Within the tragedy of 9/11, I found a sense of patriotism that the cynical me didn't know existed.  I found empathy and compassion.  I learned to recognize terror and to speak out against it no matter what form it takes.  I saw how misguided, misinformed people can do incredibly evil things. 

As a nation, our innocence died that day.  We were no longer a "young" country experiencing a prolonged adolescence collectively as a nation.  We had to grow up that day.  Our problems became adult problems that continue to demand resolution.  We forge ahead in the dark, children no longer with a memory that burns brightly to help show us the way.