Where were you on September 11th?

Katherine Scott Crawford Published 11:41 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2017 | Updated 5:44 p.m. ET Sept. 22, 2017

First published in The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record on Sept. 12, 2001, firefighters raise the American flag at Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001.(Photo: Thomas E. Franklin, The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record)

In September of 2001, I was not long out of college, living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It was a place to which I'd come as a camp counselor and backpacking guide, a place with which I'd fallen head-over-heels in love and where I'd chosen to stay.

This month, as it does every year, causes the memories of that particular time to reappear — memories that begin like an odd hum in the ear, a hum that grows louder the longer I allow myself to concentrate on it. They come in waves, and it's difficult to hone in on the young woman I was then. I can barely remember the details of my day-to-day life: what I ate for breakfast, the clothes I wore, the books I read. I remember the basic route I ran from the apartment I shared with a friend down around the local college, the way the wet grass soaked my shoes when I veered from the trail along a nearby creek. I remember loving everything about the life I lived: a life outside, working with kids and teenagers, waking in a tent in the forest, and getting paid for it. Most of all, I loved my tribe of friends and co-workers, outdoor educators all. We spent nearly all our time together.  

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I awoke at the house of one of those friends, where a few of us had spent the night after finishing out a long program with a school group the weekend before. We did this a lot back then: cooked out at someone's house, played some crazy form of lawn game dreamed up only by experiential educators, stayed up way too late and crashed onto any soft surface available. We were young. It was glorious.

But on the morning of September 11, a friend pounded on the door of the room in which I was sleeping. "You need to get up," he shouted. "You have to see this."

In a tiny living room, we gathered in front of the television. "A plane flew into the World Trade Center," someone said. I don't remember anyone sitting. I don't remember if we watched as the second plane hit, or if my memories are of the countless times I've seen the footage replayed since. I do remember that before the towers came down, my friend Joe—a former architecture student—said in a hollow voice, "They're going to fall. It's too hot."

After that, I don't remember details. What I do remember is the fog of utter shock and disbelief, fear lighting the edges—a combination of feelings I'd never felt before. At 23 years-old, I could not process what was happening to my country.

I know I called my parents and my sister, who was still in college. It took a while to track down my father, who often traveled for business and who I believed sometimes flew United Airlines in and out of the Washington-Dulles airport: a thought that made me breathless with panic. But I can't be sure. Time was swollen and disjointed, and I wonder what tricks my memory has played on me in the years since. But I needed to hear their voices—the voices of the people I loved most in the world—to locate an anchor in the midst of the dark and swirl.

I can't remember exactly what we said to each other on the phone. Knowing my parents, they likely tried to comfort me in whatever way they could. I hope I tried to comfort my younger sister. I am absolutely certain that all of us said, "I love you."

In the days that followed, life seemed to move as if underwater. The school groups who'd been scheduled at arrive at the outdoor adventure camp where my friends and I worked cancelled their trips. We stayed glued to the television, hoping survivors would be found under the rubble, hoping someone, somewhere, would tell us something good. And when we couldn't watch any more, we went to the forest.

I thought I knew about love when I was 23 years-old. I knew love of my parents and my sibling, other family members, friends, but I did not yet have a spouse or children. Only a few years earlier, as a college freshman, I'd taped a quote by the poet Emily Dickinson to the concrete block wall of my dorm room. It read, "That love is all there is, is all we known of love." I thought, then, I knew what it meant.

Sixteen years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I know love of my country, the earth, my family. I know what love is, and I know it can be brutal and beautiful, at the very same time. Each year I make myself read the transcripts of the calls the victims made to their loved ones on that terrible day. You may ask, why do this? Why would anyone choose that pain—a pain I, not having lost anyone I knew that day, know must be but a tinge of what others feel?

I do it to remember. I do it so that I never forget. I do it to hear the words every victim of September 11th who was able to use a phone that day said to the people they cared about. I do it for all the "I love you's."

Katherine Scott Crawford is an historical novelist, teacher, hiker and mom who lives in Western North Carolina. Contact her at thewritingscott@gmail.com.  

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