Ten Years Later

I confess I felt like a jerk today. 

I read this interview with a famous chef and he expressed intense irritation at restaurants boasting that they are farm-to-table (how they work with the best farm-fresh ingredients as a new and self-righteous concept). He blasted them, of course, they should (use the best and freshest ingredients)!  That's what every good restaurant does!

That's kind of how I felt today, when I felt every tweet and news program solemnly imploring me to "never forget",  I just want to hit some magical reply all and say, of course, I'll never forget!  Who in this country are you talking to?!   It felt like the hollow mantra of some prig advising me that I should wash my hands after using the bathroom--I don't need a useless reminder.

But I realize in some ways, there are times when I'd like to forget. I still have a box with the local papers (including the infamous New York Times with its shocking and uncompromising photos) and videos from those days, so yeah, you could say I was planning on not forgetting. But I know most of the time, I prefer to think of us having "recovered" from 9/11.

A lot of programming this weekend was dedicated to recognizing 9/11 due to the ten year anniversary where a lot of footage from that day was replayed. My God, it was so painful. It just brought me back to that day of panic and shroud of misery that just encompassed us for such a long time. So I guess in some ways, there was a lot that I forgot.

This morning they finally opened up the 9/11 memorial and broadcast it on network tv. Speakers included governors and mayors of then and now, but the most chilling part is when they marked the time when the planes hit and towers fell. And of course, the most heartrending part was watching family survivors clutching the engravings of lost loved ones' names in the memorial. Some did rubbings of the names with paper and pencil with their children, some were able to insert flowers into the engraved names, and some were just digging their fingers into the name, just crying and physically grieving like they never stopped from ten years ago. The program ended with Paul Simon singing "The Sounds of Silence" (with my final jerk reaction of come on, where the heck is Garfunkel?), a somewhat eerie yet appropriate song to close the broadcast.

Though I went through jerk moments today, ten years later, I didn't forget. But thanks for the reminders anyway.