Where Were You?

Life was pretty different 15 years ago. When my mom wasn’t looking, I wore a lot of clothes I made myself, and my “winter shoes” were Birkenstock Boston wools. My favorite bands were Phish and the Dave Matthews Band, and when they pop up in my iTunes library now I feel a wave of hilarious nostalgia. I had a flip phone that had been scotch-taped together a few times and didn’t take pictures. This time 15 years ago, I had only just arrived in the U.K., running around the streets with my flatmates on a “get to know London” scavenger hunt, posing with the lions in Trafalgar Square, and, as evidenced in pictures, wearing a long grey fleece sweaterthing that looked kind of like a bathrobe but was appropriate for London’s unpredictable September weather. This time 15 years ago, skies were still blue and no one could imagine choking them with the smoke, ash, and despair of 9/11.

At the time, my parents both regularly flew out of all the DC airports, where two 9/11 flights originated. My mom is from New York City, which was a probable (and eventual) post-graduation destination for a theater major like myself. I was understandably terrified and confused and afraid, especially as a 21 year old abroad for the first time – far from home, far from normalcy, no idea what safety was. And when I did eventually move to Brooklyn in 2002, I had no idea I’d still be here in 2016, raising a kid on the mean streets of Manhattan. Nowadays, terrorism is no longer the sexy new concept it was back then. Patriotism and love of country has been redefined and questioned over and over again. And as I walk through the Times Square subway on a daily basis, oftentimes dragging my two year old behind me, wouldn’t I be naïve if I didn’t wonder what was coming next?

As I’m sure you may recall, it was a Tuesday morning just like any other – except, for me, it wasn’t morning. It was early afternoon, and I was one of few students on Florida State’s London campus that didn’t have class, working in the computer lab when my friend Jay came in and said a plane had just crashed into one of the twin towers. If it were today, my cell phone would be pinging with alerts from news apps, perhaps some kind of emergency alert from Apple, text messages and tweets and Facebook posts from friends near and far. But at the time, even though it had happened about twenty minutes previously, the best the internet could do for us was a vague headline on the New York Times website with no click-through. So we headed upstairs to catch the live news, and were just in time to hear about Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon, two miles from my mom’s office.

The first, worst parts of that day were the unknowns, compounded by the fact that I wasn’t just in another time zone, I was in another country. I managed to get through to my dad almost right away, and he was able to confirm that my mom was in her car, driving to Richmond for a meeting (a great relief since travel for both of them usually involved a flight out of National or Dulles on any given week day), but within minutes, phone service devolved into nothingness. By the time most of my classmates, almost all of them longtime friends from the theater department back in Tallahassee, came wandering up to the flats after class, they were still in the dark and Jay and I had been sitting there for almost an hour, shell-shocked by the avalanche of horror on the BBC. Hasty potlucks were thrown together as we moved in packs from flat to flat, comforting each other in the absence of our families. As one of the few students from the affected regions, I felt an additional blanket of pity as they watched me watch my home city turn into a military zone. It would be a few days before the personal stories reached me overseas. The husband of a woman in my mom’s choir, the mother of one of my high school classsmates, both killed at the Pentagon. Cousins and friends barely escaping the twin towers. My mom was desperate for me to come home, but a longtime family friend in one of those Big Government Agencies told her I was probably safer in London, yet should the need arise, he could get me extracted. Many nights thereafter, I lay under the skylight over my bed in Flat 13, imagining black-hooded operatives suddenly appearing in the dark, cutting through the glass to snatch me into the night, and I kept my shoes, passport, teddy bear, and gray fleece within grabbing distance, wondering if they would even let me hold onto any personal effects.

“Where were you on 9/11” is a question almost anyone of a certain age knows the answer to, whether it’s simple and straightforward, or a little more exciting. Being an American overseas at such a time was a bizarre, otherworldly feeling. We were homesick and afraid, of course, but we were also engaged in this whole other experience that was supposed to change our lives for the better, now tangled up in an event that had changed our nation’s landscape. Were we lucky to be away from it all? Should we have gone home? Were we more or less safe in another huge, international city?

Our school, now responsible for our safety in a way they’d never imagined, gathered us in the auditorium with the intent to reassure us that our semester would go on as it should, and to casually-but-seriously posit that Americans could be targets, so best to take the flags off our backpacks, leave the Nike and Tommy Hilfiger logos in our drawers, and not to wear white sneakers – apparently, the hallmarks of being a targetable American. A dubious bomb threat at the financial institution across the street that following Saturday had maintenance men running through the buildings, banging on the doors of our flats and sending panicked college kids scurrying to the auditorium in our pajamas. We went in groups to the American embassy, where the piles of flowers were waist high. We spotted Margaret Thatcher placing a bouquet. Ever the theater major, I gathered my weeping friends in my arms, singing a shaky version if “America the Beautiful.” Months later, I found out we’d been photographed, and the picture published in several US news outlets. My dad kept the newspaper clip pinned to his office wall for years. It was a heartbreaking immortalization, and even as an actor, I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of that photo being a forever moment, preserved without my knowledge and disseminated around the world for people to say, “Oh, those poor girls.”

And “oh poor girls,” they did. The minute we went anywhere and opened our mouths, our guttural American accents almost immediately earned us looks of sympathy and the occasional hug from complete strangers. “Oh you poor thing,” people would coo. “Did you know anyone who died?”

That empathy wasn’t everywhere or for everyone, of course. Not six weeks after, I was riding a train from Venice to Florence with my friend Mel when a large American tour group, complete with white sneakers and loud Midwestern accents, came barreling through the car, clogging the aisles, nagging about seat assignments, and causing everyone around them to heartily roll their eyes. Across from us were an Italian couple and a British couple, the latter of whom had gotten on the wrong train. As they got off at the next stop, they shot us a knowing smile, saying, “well, at least we didn’t have to sit next to the Americans!”

We headed back to the US in mid-December, most of my friends bound for Florida while I was headed home to Dulles International Airport. I had been dutifully changed by my time overseas. I wore dark jeans and tough motorcycle boots purchased on Carnaby Street. The big hiking backpack I’d carried on back in August had to be checked. The Calvin Klein towels my mom had sent me over with had been left behind in favor of vintage threads scored from Notting Hill thrift shops. And when I walked through that customs gate and into the crushing embrace of my parents, the thing that struck me most was that all the Christmas decorations were red, white, and blue.

Yes, true patriotism had finally come to the U.S. Who were you if you didn’t have tiny American flags lining your driveway? A traitor. Who were you if you weren’t eating Freedom Fries? A weasel. Who were you if your trees weren’t filled with twinkling red, white, and blue lights? Well, you weren’t an American, that’s for sure.

Without getting into the contentiousness of today’s election landscape, one of the dominant news stories of the day is NFL players (and others) allegedly showing disrespect for our flag, our national anthem, and/or our military by sitting or kneeling during the anthem. And with its seemingly inconvenient timing as we approach the 15^th anniversary of the worst terror attack in our nation’s history, we’re asking the really tough questions, aren’t we? What does the flag stand for? What’s an appropriate form of protest? What are these protests really about? We’d all be lying, or at least willfully ignorant, to admit that our country’s past and present aren’t filled with conflict, pain, and blood. We’d all be lying, or at least willfully ignorant, to admit that we have the right to determine what is an appropriate amount of discord when it comes to talking about the issues. But wrapping yourself in an American flag doesn’t make the problems go away. It doesn’t make you more patriotic. I spent four months being told to hide my Americanness, for my own safety, and when I returned home to the US, it was like being dropped in a bubbling, burning vat of patriotism, stinging and burning my eyes. Despite not having been in the US, I looked at those flag-covered houses and cars and thought, “you all have no idea. You are all show, and no substance. If this is what you think it means to be an American, I don’t know what I am anymore, because this doesn’t feel right.”

Most days, I watch the news in despair, not only because of the wars and the politics and the rhetoric, but because of the painful, judgmental way we treat our fellow Americans. It makes it hard. I could leave, you know. I’m married to a foreign national. We could pack our bags and bolt for Ireland and leave the red, white and blue in the rear view mirror. But my American identity comes with the good and the bad. It is deeper than the stars and the stripes. It means more than the flag or the soldiers who serve in our country’s name.

People Magazine has done a story on the children of 9/11, children born after their fathers perished on that day, and are now teenagers. It’s hard to even think about their lot in life without wanting to fall apart. When I think about those bizarre sympathetic pats from Londoners, it doesn’t come close to fifteen years of carrying such a burden. But of course, they are beautiful and brave, and normal, if normal is a thing that they can be. 14 year old Robyn Higley says, “I’ve always been aware of the world. The world should be a place where it’s okay to be who you are, and to love whom you love and believe what you believe. Underneath, what we’re made up of is the same.”

Last August, 2015, was the first time I actually went to the site of the twin towers, now the home of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and the Freedom Towers. I’m in that neighborhood constantly, but could never bring myself to walk over a block or two.

The air is different there. It’s more quiet, even with the rush of the fountains, even with the hustle of the city going on around it. It’s not isolated, it’s right there in the thick of things, but it truly feels like the souls of those lost are still there, calm, courageous, and humble, creating a curtain between the city and the burial ground. As I walk around the pools, tracing the names of the victims on the wall, I step around smiling for themselves thanks to the aid of selfie sticks, making sure to capture the water in the background, and I think, “is that patriotism? Is that love for our country?”