Today is the 11th of September

...and it is my birthday.

Nine years ago, I was a 7th grader taking English with Mrs. Ratliff when the assistant principal stopped by to tell her that some sort of plane had crashed in New York City. The rest of the day was fairly dull for me - I think the teachers made a conscious effort to push us through the day, and in any event, my next memory is from the last bell of school, when all of the classroom's TVs were switched to CNN or its equivalent. That was when I first saw the towers fall.

And I still didn't get it. Yes, it was bad, and no, I didn't fail to understand that there would be suffering and anger, but I grew up in the 1990s, when the world was relatively peaceful and there was little fear. 9/11 did not bring about any fear for me. That's a privilege of age, I suppose, but with it came an ignorance of what these attacks would mean, until my friend Chris looked me in the eye and spoke the only words I still clearly recall from that day.

"Will, this is more important that you think it is. This day is going to define our lives." And he, I think, was right.

I went home and watched the news, then called my friend Ben, who was born a few hours ahead of me. Our short conversation acknowledge that no one would associate our birthday with the 911 emergency line, and then we went back to our families to celebrate being 13.

I met the first person to lose a friend or family member (that I knew about) last year at Williams, but for me the day has never been about our vulnerabilities, but instead about the power of events - that I and my country, and indeed my world could still be moved by events about others far away. There's hope there, even when the clouds are billowing towards us, but I doubt my birthday will ever cease being something of a reflective event.