Like most Americans, I experienced the trauma of September 11, 2001, through my television. My wife, 1-year-old daughter Lauren, and I had just moved to the Cleveland, Ohio area, and I was a stay-at-home dad.

That morning I was in my living room while Lauren watched a children’s show. Our landline phone rang, and my brother-in-law said: “Turn on the news.” I changed the channel over Lauren’s protest.

Smoke billowed out of the first tower.

Watching a national tragedy unfold in the presence of a 1-year-old made an already surreal experience even more bizarre. I was unsure what to do first. I did not have relatives I needed to call in New York City, but then what? Call my wife at work? Call my parents? Shield my child from the images? At that point it was not clear whether the explosion was an accident, terrorism or war. In shock, I did nothing for a few minutes, taking in the news and tending to Lauren with split attention.

Soon, I talked to my wife; then a plane hit the second tower, and my mind froze. The awareness of needing to parent an increasingly fussy child, however, helped me focus. There was nothing I could do, and my oblivious daughter needed me. After a few more minutes of impossible news, I decided to take a break and walk Lauren to the park nearby.

But there was no escape from the media. At the park, a mom and her young child arrived with a radio on. After we talked about the third plane that had now hit the Pentagon, we heard more chilling news: a fourth hijacked plane was reported to be “over Cleveland.”

My mind refroze.

The entire country seemed vulnerable to planes falling from the sky. Keeping Lauren safe suddenly became a more pressing mission. As we now know, that fourth flight was United Airlines Flight 93 that eventually crashed in Shanksville, Pa., after heroic efforts by American passengers.

Impact of 9/11 remains hard to convey

Today, Lauren is 19, and her sister, Lindsay, is 16. As they grew up and started learning about 9/11, it was difficult to convey the shock, fear, and anger felt by so many Americans at the time. To my surprise, I found that watching Flight 93 together, a film which recreates that flight’s horror and confusion in real time, probably brought their teen minds the most understanding.

Ironically, Lindsay is now an aspiring filmmaker, and we recently visited New York City to tour film schools. By chance, we were in Times Square on July 13 when a blackout hit Manhattan at about 7 p.m. At first, the scene was not alarming. The sun had not set, some lights remained on, and people remained calm. But soon we started hearing and then seeing multiple firetrucks race through darkened intersections. After some fears of terrorism, word spread (thanks to cell phones) that the cause was electrical.

We also learned, however, that the firefighters were rushing to rescue people stuck in pitch-black, oppressively hot subway stations and elevators. As we watched Broadway theatergoers empty into narrow streets, a truck full of firefighters stopped right in front of us. We saw their intense faces as they jumped into action and headed into a building people were leaving.

At that moment, it hit us: first responders really do run into harm’s way for all of our sakes. While most of us change the channel, walk away or hail a cab out of danger (as Lindsay and I did eventually), first responders race to the dark places. The 2019 Manhattan blackout was no 9/11, but the faces of those firefighters in Times Square made the abstract concept of heroism concrete.

On the drive across Pennsylvania from Cleveland to New York City, my daughter and I had seen signs that read: “Safety Corridor Next 5 Miles.” That phrase struck me as what parents try to provide for their children for at least 18 years. By extension, a “safety corridor” is what firefighters and other first responders try to provide for all of us for the rest of our lives. The appropriate amount of gratitude is hard to convey.

Others can give you a more riveting account of that day. What they saw. What they felt. What they smelled. 

Stories that are breath-taking and heartbreaking in the same sentence. Someone living out a surreal real-life action movie.

Nothing extraordinary happened to me that day – Sept. 11, 2001. I was just one of the millions of spectators. But as I cut through Union Square in Manhattan on my way to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village to give blood, I do recall one lightning bolt of a thought flash across my mind.

There is no way I’m bringing a child into this world.

I was 25, single, and under no threat of the ladies forming an ovulation line at my doorstep at any point in the near future.  But the sentiment was there. Fuck this place and everyone in it. What’s the point of building anything – of trying – if the worst, most reckless impulses of this species can wipe it away in the blink of an eye.

And I’m not just talking about the terrorists. Shortly after 9/11, a store on my block covered their window with a huge sign that read “NUKE THEM ALL.” It was still there when I moved away nine months later. For all I know that sign is still there today. The person who put it up probably has a Cabinet position now. I could see where 21st century America was headed. 

Twelve years later, my wife and I brought our first child into the world. So, what changed? 

It’s human nature to be defiant. We’re hard wired for it. Here I am writing this and here you are reading it. We’re both products of millennia of defiance. Ancestors who faced famine, war, disease, persecution. People with less resources at their disposal than you or I. And yet they soldiered on. They held a tiny baby in their arms – your great-great-great-great-whatever – and made a bet that things would get better. Diseases would be cured, famines would pass, education be acquired, representative government truly attained. Maybe not in their lifetime, but sometime. Maybe even in a far off and distant land. 

What can I say? I’m a product of people who took a chance that things will get better. So are you. So are we all. 

I had the same thoughts on 11/9/16 that I did on 9/11/01. And I had more skin in the game to boot, with a wife and daughter. What made it worse, was that this time America did it to itself. I’ll be honest, if I see the wrong headline at the wrong time, I wonder if I did the right thing bringing life into the world. It’s easy for despair to get a toehold.  

And yet, almost a year to the day later, we welcomed our son into the world.

Irish playwright Samuel Beckett once wrote, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” Is the damage done this century to our society, our environment, our world irreparable? I don’t have a crystal ball – but I’ve got two bets on the future that says it’s not.  

Photo by Jason Greene