I cried for the world last night. I cried for the day that I watched the Twin Towers, once sturdy beacons of hope and of freedom, feebly crumble to the ground as I stood on the roof of my office building only 18 blocks away. I cried for the thousands of lives destroyed, obliterated by the face of evil, and also for the loss of an innocence and a naiveté that my generation had, perhaps, gotten too used to.

I'm 26 years old. I was born after the Holocaust, after the Vietnam War. I grew up in a cocoon cushioned by prosperity and bathed in a sense of peace. Even when the Gulf War began, that plastic bubble of comfort did not burst. It didn't even deflate for I had no emotional ties to the war that was broadcast live onto my television set. It was just too far away. I'd never been to the Middle East. I didn't know the people we were fighting. I understood very little. The single devastating experience of national importance that I can emotionally recall was the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. It was horrifying to watch the fiery blast take the lives of the astronauts and teacher. But I was somehow comforted because it was a mistake, a malfunction, a gross error. It could be prevented from happening again. The bubble remained intact and life continued as normal.  

But that Tuesday in September, it wasn't a mistake. It was deliberate. It was planned. It was mapped out and well executed. It wasn't way up in the sky or in a remote city miles across the ocean. It was here. I could see it, hear it. I could even smell it. And with that first whiff, the bubble burst.  

I got out of the city that weekend, and one evening as I walked down a quiet, suburban street reluctantly replaying the shocking images in my head, I stumbled upon a tiny, lone American flag. It lay crumpled on the sidewalk, beckoning. I picked it up. I smoothed it out. I brought it home to the city a few days later and hung it in my room. There it remains. Each day, that tiny flag gives me back a little bit of strength--a tiny bit of hope, that this world, now so different, might somehow come away from that Tuesday changed for the better. I, someone who once looked upon an American flag no differently than a street sign, now look upon it with a pride unfamiliar.   

Patriotism is a foreign feeling to me because my generation has always lacked it. Not because we're selfish or uneducated or heartless. But because we've never known the need for it. Until Tuesday. We've taken our country for granted. The freedom and independence for which our forefathers fought was simply something we learned in grade school, memorized for tests, and regurgitated for a passing grade. But it never had anything to do with us. Until Tuesday.  

We cannot blame ourselves and our lack of unity for Tuesday's tragedy--that if we'd come together years ago, maybe this wouldn't have happened. It is too late for that. There is no longer a place for "what if," only for "what is." And we can take "what is"--this time, this undeniable turning point in our world, to try to recapture what disappeared so long ago, before I was even born. A patriotism, a unity, a sense of family with our fellow Americans. When I walk down the streets of New York now, I see those walking by not merely as fellow New Yorkers, but fellow citizens, fellow countrymen and women, brothers and sisters in a family that until Tuesday was too divided. We fought passionately over political parties, race, gender, economic and social status. And all of that somehow seemed okay. That was our reality. Until Tuesday.  

Tuesday has passed. We can never regain what came before. We can continue trying to resume some sort of normalcy. We can endeavor to fill the hole that was ripped deep into the heart of our nation, and no matter how hard we try, we will be left with an emptiness that will remain hollow for some time to come. But we can also latch on to that distinct feeling of hope that maybe now, if we continue to come together as we have since that Tuesday, something like this can be prevented from happening again. It won't be easy. Especially for a generation so unfamiliar with tragedy.  

No, I lost no one close to me on Tuesday, September 11, when the Twin Towers disappeared in a cloud of evil--like a carefully and beautifully crafted  sandcastle kicked over and demolished by a cruel child. But as I cried last  night, I cried because we all lost something that, until Tuesday, we didn't know we had. And I doubt if we'll ever fully get it back--the bubble is  forever lost, never to be inflated again. But maybe, just maybe, we can gain  something else. An unbreakable bond, a strength that until now was unrealized.

Author's Biography

Katie Shullman graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor  in 1997, obtaining a B.A. in English. 

She currently lives in New York City and works as a children's book editor. She is a writer of children's stories and poems, personal essays, and short fiction.

E-mail Katie at kshullman@scholastic.com

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