My grandparents had left Denver after a visit with my family, and I was surprised the morning of the 11th when I found them at a rest stop outside of Glenwood Springs, where I had gone with my bike strapped to the roof of my car for a nice ride in the mountains. I had just gotten the bike off the rack when I spotted granny coming out of their travel trailer, which I hadn’t even recognised till I saw her! We were all very pleasantly surprised by the coincidence, and had breakfast together, enjoying each other’s company and conversation.
After breakfast, we prepared to depart each other, but not before a customary visit to a nearby toilette, as we were in a rest stop. The toilettes were closed, however, but of the other people at the rest stop, nobody seemed to know why, though someone was heard to say that it was because of terrorists.
Yeah! Who would be terrorising a toilette in the mountains of Colorado?
We went back to the table and talked about the toilette’s implied malfunction when a state DOT truck drove up and the guys inside said “when you are finished with your breakfast, we are going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Why?”
That’s when we learned that as a result of airplanes attacking the US, the government had ordered a shutdown of all Federal facilities, which included a toilette on a mountainous stretch of I-70 in Colorado. The details were sketchy, but nobody knew who had done it, it involved airplanes, and the Trade Center buildings were already down with more planes on their way in.
It was not much to go on, but it was enough to go. America was under attack, radio reception was poor in the mountains, and the details were only going to be gathered back in Denver for me. My grandparents and I soon loaded up and parted ways, and I drove 100 miles an hour all the way back to Denver with others on the road doing the same. The police gave little care to us as the other drivers and I sped down to our places of safety.
Just as the Northridge Earthquake gave me a sense of insecurity that lasted a decade, that day in Colorado filled me up with a very similar sense of earth shaking insecurity. I came home to see images of people jumping from the World Trade Center, and felt as though it was America, and it was me up there, deciding to jump or burn. Soon after, I left America for Great Britain, and was there when the attacks happened on Madrid, and on London. I learned from a people who had dealt with 30 years of IRA bombings to keep my chin up and go about my life. The alternative was to give in to fear, and succumb to a terrorist victory, which I believe that ten years on, America has done without realising it.
I am back in America now after 8 years abroad. However history will remember the day matters little to me when compared to how I remember it. How I remember it matters little to history.
This is my piece, and my hope for peace. I will teach my children not to fear, not to prejudice, not to accept ignorance as the final barrier to understanding themselves or others. I will strive to give them an America that is a better part of a better world. If I cannot give them a better world, then I will at least give the world better children.
Kelsey J Bacon