9/11+10

We began school Thursday across the parking lot at what is now called Our Lady of Guadalupe Academy, the former St. Anthony's School.  I teach the 8th grade religion class and the second day I looked out at the group and reminded myself that they were between the ages of three and four in 2001.  They obviously have no real memory of September 11, nor any real concept of what the events of that almost preternaturally sunny Tuesday meant.  The world that they have grown up in has been shaped by the war on terrorism, much like my childhood was by the Cold War.  I couldn't imagine a world without the Soviet Union, or the fear of nuclear annihilation.  I grew up after the duck and cover days, and only remember one bomb drill during my elementary school years, when I was in first grade.  I can't say I lived in constant fear and loathing, but I knew the threat existed, and more than once wondered if I would live to see adulthood.

I don't know what's in the heads of these kids.  I know that they have preoccupations that I didn't growing up with in suburban Westchester; gangs are a problem here, the pressure to do drugs, drink and get involved in premarital sex is already upon them.  I'm not sure if they feel any anxiety over the possibility of a dirty bomb going off, or if the sight of one of the low flying jets approaching Newark Airport, right next to us, gives them a slight twinge in the gut.  I know I'm less paranoid now than I was in 2002 or '03, when we had color coded alerts and anthrax scares.  But we still have our reminders that we live in a post-9/11 world; the public service announcements telling us to be suspicious of abandoned bags on subways and the constant war footing that has now become a part of the background noise.  I lived in a time before all this, when you didn't have to empty your pockets before entering Yankee Stadium, or take your belt and shoes off before getting on a plane.  But for those young people, this is life as they've known it; the only normal they've ever experienced. 

Today most of the memorial services and news coverage will focus on remembering the events of ten years ago, and especially the victims.  This is only right.  But I can't help but think of now, and the world our children are inheriting.  I could never have predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbolic end of the Cold War.  I don't know what the end of the war on terror will look like, but I've got to have the courage to imagine it.  Not so much for me, as for the children, that they might have a chance to shape a new, better reality.