Where were you?

“Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?” — Alan Jackson

Everybody my age has an answer to that question. I was 19. Brandon was in the Sandhills, and we were still new enough that a couple of days apart felt like too long. So that morning, he climbed into his black Chevy Blazer and headed down to Wilmington to see me. Somewhere along the way, he heard about the first plane on the radio.

I was still asleep. Blissfully. Stupidly.

Brandon woke me up, but he never said a word about what was happening in New York. He climbed in bed with me and cuddled until Mama started hollering from the kitchen about New York being under attack.

What? That couldn’t be right. She must’ve been confused.

We got to the kitchen in time to see the second plane hit on CNN. And in those few seconds between watching that plane disappear into the building and understanding what we were seeing, the world we knew disappeared with it.

And then we watched people jump. After that, everything moved fast. And somehow, it didn’t move fast enough.

The phone started ringing. Brandon’s mama called and told him to come home. If more attacks were coming, she wanted her family together for it.

Mamaw, meanwhile, decided the appropriate response to a national tragedy was to quit taking her blood pressure medicine. It took a two-hour conversation to convince her that stopping her meds wasn’t going to help anyone — especially her.

Daddy called. He was crying. My hopelessly redneck daddy was crying for New Yorkers. So was I.

Mama left for second shift, and I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone, not knowing if more was coming. So I got in my car and drove to the Sandhills. If the world really was ending, I wasn’t facing it alone.

For a few days afterward, none of the lines that usually divide us mattered. We weren’t North Carolinians. We weren’t Southerners. We weren’t hillbillies or beach bums. We were just Americans. Hurt. Scared. Furious that somebody had reached across an ocean and attacked us on our own soil. I haven’t forgotten what that felt like.

I was 19 years old. I knew what I was looking at. I didn’t need anybody to give it a softer name. Neither did Daddy, crying on the phone for people he had never met.

Which is exactly why it got my blood up when a memo went around at Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC, telling reporters not to call that morning a terrorist attack. Too loaded, apparently. Loaded for the people who jumped? For Daddy on the phone? No. Loaded for the folks who think the truth is too rude to say out loud.

The memo told reporters to say the hijackings “led to passenger jet crashes.” As if four planes fell out of a clear blue sky. As if nearly 3,000 people died in an accident. It wasn’t an accident. It was murder. Premeditated. Cold-blooded. Murder. By men who hated this country and everything it stands for.

I don’t care if the word is loaded when it’s also true. The CBC walked the memo back once enough people hollered. Good. It never should have gone out in the first place.

Twenty-five years isn’t long enough to start editing history. To sand down the sharp edges. To turn something terrible into something we can discuss without feeling it. I’m too Southern for that. In my family, you tell it the way it happened, even when the telling is ugly.

Wherever you were on Sept. 11, 2001, take a minute and go back there with me. Remember where you were. Remember who you were with. Remember what you felt when you realized the world had changed and there was no going back.

I remember being 19 years old in Mama’s kitchen, watching the second plane hit. I remember the phone calls. And I remember what it felt like, for a little while, when all the things that usually divided us fell away, and we were simply Americans.

It hurts to remember. It should. Because nearly 3,000 people don’t get to remember anything at all.

Cassie Clark is an eighth-generation North Carolinian and the creator of Where the Dogwood Blooms, a blog, podcast, and social platform dedicated to the state’s history, culture, and way of life.