TWENTY YEARS AGO, I was in a silent Kenan Stadium trying to figure it out.
We reflexively talk about where we were for September 11th. But our answers, often offered unasked, are not so much about where we were, even if that’s all we explain out loud, as about who we were. And I’ve never much enjoyed discussing it.
In September of 2001, I was a senior at UNC, a sports writer for The Daily Tar Heel. I’d just flown back from Texas, where Mack Brown’s new team had thumped the Tar Heels. You could still walk right up to an airport gate without a ticket then.
I landed Sunday night. It happened Tuesday morning.
Pretty quickly, my memory lost track of most of the details as my vaguer sense of the day took over. I remember friends who hadn’t heard from fathers. I remember debating in the newsroom how 9/12’s front page should look. I remember not going to Linda’s for drinks after the paper was put to bed. I remember going to Media Law class only because passing depended upon it. I remember our professor waiting until we were all seated and class had begun to announce she wouldn’t take attendance that day, and we almost all stayed because it would’ve been too awkward to pack our things, climb over our classmates, and walk out. I remember that in this journalism classroom we stuck to that day’s planned lesson, whatever it was, instead of talking about the world changing in real time outside those walls. I remember watching the clock and knowing she was not where I was.
I wrote about sports then but there were no sports, and all anybody could think about was one thing anyhow, myself included. So that Saturday, I did the only thing I could think to do. I sat in the bleachers of an empty stadium while the cancelled football game was supposed to be played and I listened for breaks in the silence.
I heard no answers there, of course. I was young and naive. I had no idea where we’d be in 20 years. But it felt like it could be somewhere to worry about.
I had been on the roof of the South Tower a few weeks before it crashed. I saw Ground Zero three months after. Two years later, I moved down the block and became friends and coworkers with New Yorkers whose answer to where they were was a very different thing.
Where we’ve all been since, together and not, that’s what I think of now though. I remember Never Forget being both a promise and a threat. I remember sporting events morphing into jingoistic pageants and realizing they’d never turn back. I remember gathering around a TV after a family funeral as a president announced we were invading Iraq, and I remember my sister leaving the room to cry because her husband’s ship was headed that way. I remember how the stories would unexpectedly trickle out of people who’d been in the city that day. I remember firefighters and police officers walking on water for a time. I remember working across the street from the Empire State Building wondering if its day could come. I remember not worrying too much. I remember recession. I remember Zuccotti Park. I remember a friend’s father asking me at a party what I thought of the “Ground Zero mosque.” I remember standing outside in line, only a river between my back and the skyscrapers, to pull a lever for the first Black president. I remember the lasting backlash that immediately followed. I remember never seeing some people the same way again. I remember at the Pit, thousands by candlelight mourning Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. I remember while reporting seeing a crumpled change of clothes in the backseat of Deah’s car. I remember a parking dispute feeling for a moment like an implausible explanation but a more livable one. I remember learning Kenan Stadium was named for a mass murderer. I remember Silent Sam. I remember Charlottesville and being careful during protests to keep traffic on the other side of the stone wall. I remember white supremacy with its mask off in the White House and getting escorts and handshakes on campus. I remember pepper spray and callousness and cowardice. I remember knees being taken and Black lives not mattering. I remember the hate. I so remember the hate. I remember the rejection of the first female president when my daughter was 1. I remember the allegations and misogyny. I remember that was part of the appeal. I remember the wall and the ban. I remember lockdown. I remember the racist wisecracks from behind a presidential seal. I remember a pandemic. I remember so many choosing to keep it going.
This year, on the 20th anniversary of September 11th, I’ll be in Kenan Stadium again. I’ll be wearing a mask this time. This time the stadium will be loud.