June 2002 Issue - Essay # 8
Fear
and Freedom:
One Year Later
By Kristin
Dreyer Kramer
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Like
every other American, I’ll never forget where I was when I first heard
about last year’s World Trade Center attack.
I was in my car, driving down Route 401 in Toronto, heading back
home to Michigan after a long weekend visit with my fiancé. The morning
radio show interrupted its typical morning antics to make the
announcement. Like
every other American, I can remember that flood of emotion that overtook
me, there on Route 401. I remember the disbelief. The shock. I remember
the tears that began to well up and flow down my cheeks as my whole body
shook. I
remember picturing the World Trade Center--all those people. It wasn’t
hard. I had just been there three weeks earlier. I had sipped a gin and
tonic in the bar at the very top--just three weeks earlier. I had spent
a long weekend taking the train in and out of the WTC station --just
three weeks earlier. Just three weeks earlier, and I would have been
there. I
remember reaching for my cell phone. I tried calling my family and
friends back home, but I couldn’t get through. I called my fiancé in
a panic. And as the morning radio show went back to its antics, I
scanned the dial, searching for some kind of news. Since
that moment, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned about fear--and about
freedom. It
took me an hour, mindlessly cruising down the 401, until reality struck
me, and I knew that the US-Canadian border would be closed by the time I
tried to cross it. I knew I wouldn’t be getting home any time soon. So
I turned around and drove back to my fiancé’s apartment. I spent the
afternoon sitting in the dark, watching the horrible event over and
over. As
everyone around me resumed life-as-usual, I couldn’t help but feel
that my freedom had been stolen from me. I wasn’t in danger--not at
all. But I suddenly realized that no matter how comfortable I felt in
Canada, no matter how many times I’d crossed the border without too
much thought, it was still a foreign country. And I couldn’t go home.
I wasn’t free to go home. At that moment, all I wanted was to join in
with the flag-wavers back home, but I couldn’t. In
the year since, so much has changed. While, for the most part, life for
the everyday American has gone back to normal, something inside us has
changed. The wreckage has been cleared. The books have been written. The
monuments are being erected. The initial nation-wide banding together
has fizzled. Yet the
strength we gained through the experience isn’t fading. Slowly,
we’ve regained our confidence. We’ve
gradually begun to let go of the fear.
The rumors of possible bombings of bridges and shopping malls and
tall buildings and airplanes no longer shut down our lives the way they
once did. I’ve
flown internationally three times since September 11.
In fact, I was in the air when the bombing started on the morning
of October 7. I’m not
afraid to fly, nor am I naïve enough to think that the new security
measures everyone’s taking can really prevent another incident. I’ve
been subjected to the occasional airport-security pat-down, and I’ve
been asked to remove my shoes so they could be checked.
I’ve eaten all of my meals with plastic cutlery.
Still, recently my friend unintentionally flew across the country
(and back) with a pocketknife in her carry-on--and was never detained.
My husband has been slowly making his way through the security
checks required to get his Green Card, yet I know that the INS recently
accepted the visa applications of some of the World Trade Center
terrorists. But
I don’t live my life in fear.
September
11 was a wake-up call for all of us. It was a reality check. It reminded us that we’re not
invincible, and our country isn’t impenetrable.
It taught our government leaders that they really do need to pay
attention to what’s going on around them.
And, at the same time, it reminded us that we’re still one nation. No matter how many
different ideas we have or who agrees with whom--we’re still
the United States of America. Sometimes,
we have to set aside our differences and work side-by-side. Every
generation of Americans, I heard after September 11, needs its own war. Each generation needs a wake-up call.
We tend to take our country for granted until something happens
to remind us of how important our county and its leaders are to us.
I guess we needed to have our freedoms taken away from us for a
while before we could understand just how great they really are. |
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Author's Biography Kristin Dreyer Kramer is a freelance writer whose words can be found online and in print in a number of publications around the world. Once an advertising copywriter, Kristin is now a new wife, a new resident of Massachusetts, and the editor-in-chief of NightsAndWeekends.com. She can be reached at krdrkr@hotmail.com.
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