25 Years Later.

When I was in seventh grade I had a friend in my homeroom class named Savita.

Savita was Indian and Muslim. She is the first traditional Muslim person I remember knowing really well. She wore a hijab and I distinctly remember her fasting for Ramadan.

My suburban school district outside of Pittsburgh had a fairly diverse student population in terms of race and socioeconomic status. For the record, I am white, and my family is of Irish, German, Welsh, and English ancestry. This is a typical white person's makeup in Western Pennsylvania. Many white and black people in Pittsburgh have families who moved into the area to work in the mills in the 1800's and early 1900's. If you've seen the second season of "The Gilded Age", the poor Irish family depicted working in the mills is not far off from the reality of my ancestors.

Savita moved sometime late in my seventh grade year, which was the Spring of 2001. One of her parents got a job in another city, and I never saw her again.

In the fall, on September 11th, 2001, I remember sitting in Mr. Machen's history class in first period. My eyes were glazed over in typical eighth grade fashion, and I remember him saying, "One of the World Trade Center Towers has been hit with a plane." I remember his TV was broken, so we couldn't watch anything that was going on. My second period teacher was an angry old woman who should have retired years before, Mrs. Martinelli... she didn't turn her TV on either....

Yet, somehow, without phones and without all of our teachers telling us what was going on, we all found out none of this was an accident and that a plane had hit the second tower. I remember the Principal announcing that all teachers should turn off their TVs because of the mass trauma we were all seeing on screen. Soon after, the Pentagon was hit.

An hour or so later, we found out a plane went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania an hour and a half east of Pittsburgh. That plane went down literally right next to my church camp. (The next year at camp we would ride horses out to a mountain over looking the crash site, which was basically just a crater of rubble. It's a memory burned deep in my brain.)

I came home and the TV was on. My Mom looked at me and said, "Do you know what's happening?" and I just solemnly nodded.

My Dad worked at the VA and I remember them locking down the hospital since it was a government entity. He got home really late from work.

The next day on TV, I remember President Bush talking about white women escorting their Muslim friends out grocery shopping to prevent them from hate crimes. I remember turning to my Dad and saying, "Dad, I'm worried about Savita."

2001 was a time before you could easily stay connected to friends who moved away. Unless you had their address to send letters, or a new phone number, they were hard to track down. Thinking about that in the modern context is wild.

Now, at 38 years old I've lived in New York City for ten years, and I'm marrying native New Yorker next month.

I've found the collective trauma here to be intense. I have friends who remember not being able to call loved ones that day because all the phone lines were down in Manhattan. My fiance's aunt, who recently passed, worked in the World Trade Center basement. Grace just happened to leave the building before the attacks happened. She's one of those crazy stories you hear about all the time.... She got to live to be an old woman... So many didn't.

I went to the 9/11 museum a few years ago and found it painfully overwhelming, even as a non-native of New York. I consider myself a Pittsburgher (Yinzer) first and a New Yorker second. I've hit the ten year mark of living here and I'm marrying a native, so I have some right to the city. While I was born in Pittsburgh, New York is my chosen home, and I'm extremely protective of her. I'm extremely protective of her people, because they've become my people and my community...

I think that's why the 9/11 museum hit me so hard.

It was a moment of: "How dare you hurt the city that's embraced me?"

I'm deeply moved that Zohran Mamdani is now our mayor. We have a Muslim mayor in New York 25 years after a deep atrocity was committed by a completely radical fringe sect of the Islam. I think that's beautiful and healing.

I just hope that the healing continues, and that we truly never forget.