The thing about September 11th for me is that I don’t remember it, and I wish I did.

When the towers fell I was three years old, about to turn four, too little to have any distinct memories. That part of my life is a warm, hazy blur of building blocks, stuffed animals, cheerful day cares, and the tiny bed I had near the window in our old apartment. The World Trade Center was something I’d never seen before, unless I caught a glance of the upper floors from the skyline over Queens one day, I don’t know. My father worked from the house; my mother worked in Brooklyn. Neither were there when the towers went down, but as I later learned, my mother was close enough.

On September 11th she began her day voting in the mayoral primary election, the last one she ever did. She went to her school in Williamsburg to teach middle school English, but didn’t get too far into any lessons before the day was completely shattered. From the west-facing, open windows, she could smell the smoke blowing in from across the river, and it was at that moment, she told me, that she became a first responder. Sure, she didn’t rush into the towers and save hundreds of lives like the immeasurably brave firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, and rescue workers who risked the ultimate sacrifice that morning. All the same, it was she and her colleagues who had to take control of the situation, handle the chaos in the school, follow the procedures, dismiss the students, and make sure that everyone left safely. Once that was over, she had to make her way home through the creeping traffic lining the highways of New York City, tell my father what happened, recollect her wits, and make sure her fragile, yellow-braided daughter didn’t catch wind of the smoke and ash and grief permeating the air of the city.

The next day schools were closed, but I wasn’t in school yet, and I don’t remember her staying home as anything remarkable. I was little; what did I know?

Sometimes I wonder what would be different if my birthday had been in January. Same grade, same classmates, but nine more months of memory. Would that have made the difference between recognition and oblivion? Had I been four years old, about to turn five, would my parents have shielded me any less? Would the tragic events of that day have been an occurrence to me, an event, a reality, rather than a textbook history lesson?

That, I suppose, is really my problem. I live in the very city which was attacked, a bus ride away from the heart of the Big Apple in the city that never sleeps. I’ve stood where the towers once were, felt the carvings of the names under my fingertips, inhaled the beauty of Tribute in Light as it beamed its rays towards the heavens. I was alive. I was here. And yet the entire thing is a history lesson to me. When I grieve, it is not the grief of someone who remembers, but someone who imagines they remember. I can’t mourn the way others do. I wasn’t there like others were. I didn’t witness the destruction, the terror, the pain, the cruelty, the sight of humanity at it’s worst, and I didn’t see the rebuilding, the comfort, the resurgence of faith and hope, the reality of people pulling together to be their best. I didn’t get to be awash in the integrity of the human spirit.

I’m not one of those who watched it happen, lived the fear, saw the smoke.

But I’m not one of the kids who didn’t exist, either.

Not fitting either category, I stand in a murky twilight, aching to be one of the witnesses, to share the grief of so many, to understand how they feel, what they saw, because I am one of them, but somehow I am also not.

I do not want to represent the generation of ignorance that never knew the true tragedy like this.

I was there. But I wasn’t. And how can I ever explain that?