For everyone who remembers it, 9/11 is branded into our hearts and minds in a unique way.
I was only nine years old on September 11, 2001, and yet I can remember it in vivid detail. I was playing outside. I remember the weather was cool in Des Moines that day. I was wearing gray sweatpants and an Oakland Raiders T-shirt which my mom must have thrifted because I have never in my life been a Raiders fan.
I was lost in a world of imagination, swinging a stick around, probably pretending to be either a knight or a Civil War soldier. But I was abruptly taken out of my fantasy world and brought into a dark world that was very real. My mom called me inside. She wanted me to see what was happening. She knew it was important for me to see this; important for me to remember.
The towers were burning. I would watch them fall. As a nine-year-old boy I watched people jump to their deaths to avoid the flames. I heard the update live when the Pentagon was hit.
At some point, my mom turned to my dad and said, “We are under attack”. What a statement. “We are under attack”. I had never seen New York City or Washington D.C. in my life. I didn’t know any of the people directly affected by what was happening. And yet, that’s exactly what I believed in my heart. We were under attack. We Americans were being attacked. I, an American boy in Iowa, was under attack.
There was a sense of American unity in the days following 9/11 that I’ve never seen before or since. I think every car I passed had a bumper sticker saying, “United We Stand”. Nearly every house in our neighborhood flew an American flag. We all felt the same way. We had been attacked.
As a nine-year-old, I learned a lot of new words on September 11, 2001. I learned there was this religion called Islam. I learned about a place called the Middle East. I’d heard of terrorism before, but only from watching old Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. I learned it was a real thing and not just something in action movies.
My boyhood interaction with 9/11 fundamentally changed the way I thought about life. This cemented in my mind that America was my home and her enemies were my enemies. It also made me realize that the world was a scary place and there were bad men in it.
That night after I went to bed, I discovered I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw two burning towers. I crawled out of bed and told my mom I was scared. She told me, in so many words, to trust God and be brave.
Twenty-five years later, the lessons of that day are still fresh in my mind. The United States of America, for all her flaws and defects, is still my home, and I will defend her from all enemies foreign and domestic. I long for a nation that can unite in the face of real evil in this world.
And so, every night when I tuck my kids into bed, I tell them to trust God and be brave.
Joshua Stilwell is the editor of Warren’s Voice
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