Remembering 9/11, a day that changed everything | THE MOM STOP

There are decisive moments in most people’s lives where there is a “before” and an “after.” Life following that decisive moment is seemingly forever altered.

The death of a loved one, for instance. A wedding joining two peoples’ lives or the birth of a child. Sometimes it’s a natural disaster, scarring the live of those affected forever. Or a cancer diagnosis, that not only affects the patients, but also those who love that person.

Sometimes, unfortunately, those decisive moments, particularly those that affect the entire nation or world, can be a shared experience for millions that marks an entire generation. Pearl Harbor. The assassination of John F. Kennedy. The first time man walked on the moon. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

I am part of a microgeneration of adults — those of us that may technically be millennials, but don’t fit into the millennial generation or the Generation X before us. Instead, it’s a microgeneration sometimes referred to as the “Oregon Trail” generation, those born in the early to mid-1980s who had a childhood largely without computers or internet. We remember what life was like before cellphones and instant connectivity. But unlike Generation X, we were still juveniles when the internet went widespread — while we may have experienced early childhood in the time “before,”, we remember what it was like when we got our first computer, or the first time we signed on online. Thankfully, many of us were adults by the time we joined social media.

Our childhoods were during a time when we were too young to really remember the Cold War. We grew up during a time of peace and relative prosperity and indulgence of the late 1980s and 1990s.

But then there was Sept. 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks that shocked the world. But for those of my generation, who were turning of age, in college or high school, it was a seminal moment that marked the “before” and the “after.”

When the attacks occurred, like so many people, I was glued to the news, terrified of how something like that could happen and afraid for what was next. As a college student at the time, I walked from my sorority house to my class the next day, seemingly in shock that everything on campus could seem so unchanged when our world had been irreversibly altered. Lives had been senselessly lost. Our innocence had been lost. And I remember wondering if life could ever seem quite the same.

It seems particularly strange that we are now marking marks the 21^st year since those terrorist attacks.

In March, my husband and I brought our three kids to New York City for a family vacation during spring break, and during that trip we visited the 9/11 memorial and museum at Ground Zero. It was not my first time at the museum, but it was for my children. And while it was a somber, serious experience for all of us, I realized that the place holds a particular importance for my husband and me, like it does so many others who were alive during that time to witness what happened. For those of us who remember, it was a decisive moment that marked the end of the innocence, the end of the “before” and the start of the “after.”

And for my children and others of their generation, there’s only been an “after.” But as I stood by the reflecting pools at the 9/11 memorial, my then-6-year-old daughter traced the names marked in metal.  I told her what happened in that place, two decades before. I’m grateful she wasn’t alive to experience it. At the same time, I recognize how vital it is that we remember, and teach future generations so that lessons learned that day are not lost.

Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at momstopcolumn@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Remembering 9/11, a day that changed everything | THE MOM STOP