Seventeen Years

I work in a neighborhood of Arlington called Crystal City, a strip of office buildings and restaurants 15 minutes walk from the Pentagon. My bus ride every morning takes me past the building where 17 years ago today a jetliner crashed killing 125 people on the ground and 64 on the plane.

I remember that day as if it was yesterday. Who my age does not? It was also a Tuesday, but the weather was perfect, one of those crystalline early fall mornings that we used to have around here before being enclosed in a big wet sock.

It was Mom who alerted me. She knew I didn't often listen to the morning news. And then the other calls started. They came in all day. Rumors abounded, chief among them that the State Department was also under attack.

An editorial I read today made the argument that many of the problems that beset us now — high deficits, wars that kill our soldiers and drain our morale and coffers, loss of stature abroad, even the current administration — can be traced to the 9/11 attacks.

"The world will never be the same," I remember telling the children, who had returned home early from school that day. But they will never understand that. The world they know is the world wrought by 9/11.

(The Pentagon, moments after the crash. Photo: Wikipedia.)