Like everyone else in America, I remember Sept. 11, and I remember the morning after.
On that heartbreakingly beautiful day, my neighborhood seemed transformed, but not in any familiar way.
After a heavy snowfall, trees and homes go under cover; after a rainstorm, branches and garbage cans are swept out of place, leaving the landscape topsy-turvy. This was different. This transformation was within, caused not by nature but by the need for human contact and reassurance, and the sharing of communal grief.
On the outside, my tiny piece of America far from the carnage in New York, Virginia and Western Pennsylvania was blissfully unchanged. Inside, we all believed we'd never be the same again.
In the months since the world turned inside out, there have been many great pronouncements concerning how America has changed. We are a more patriotic nation because flags are flying and tricolor pins are the latest fashion. We are a more caring nation because of thousands of charitable acts and billions pledged to disaster relief. We are a more humble nation, after our sense of security was shattered by a small, shadowy enemy.
Suddenly, old-time values are back in vogue. "But, sweetheart, why do you have to marry a doctor?" a mother asks her daughter in a cartoon in a recent New Yorker. "Why can't you marry a fireman?"
It is to America's credit that this atrocity brought out the best in us. But as this year of shock and sorrow concludes, let us also be honest with one another. What we are seeing is only the beginning of a transformation, not its complete arc.
It is too soon to know how or in what direction or even if America has truly changed.
Better to ask: How can this nation change?
First, we can change by building on this wrenching experience to stitch together our frayed civic life. The "greatest generation" learned its civic lesson not in theory, but in practice as the battleships of Pearl Harbor still smoldered. Myriad cooperative endeavors between the federal government and civic society allowed a shocked nation to act together, whether by planting victory gardens or buying war bonds or sending 12 million Americans into a Civilian Defense Corps.
Nowadays, that ground is fertile. Young people are involved in community service as never before and that energy must be harnessed. This is a ripe moment to expand AmeriCorps and other public-private avenues for service, to teach civics in schools, to vote and participate and protest, and show the world that our patriotism is more than a consumer act.
We can change by turning the hero-worship of rescue workers and fighter pilots into a new respect for the importance of government. President Bush doesn't deride Washington politicians anymore but that alone won't erase decades of cynicism and mistrust.
The proof of a lasting shift in our estimation of government's worth will be found in the agendas and budgets put forward by the White House, Congress and state lawmakers across the country. It will be found in the quality of candidates running for public office and if those campaigns are financed fairly. And whether America's best and brightest again view work in the public sector as a noble calling.
We can change by recognizing that human beings should not be blamed for their own vulnerabilities. The mental-health fallout from Sept. 11 has been as profound as any physical destruction and will take much longer to resolve.
It's a message the entire nation should hear. We reacted to the trauma many Americans experienced post-Sept. 11 with sympathy, understanding and cash. Now we can react to the trauma many Americans experience in their daily lives not with the usual hostility and denial, but with recognition that disturbances of the mind are as deserving of treatment as any assault on the body.
We can change by reasserting our belief in pluralism, but not mistaking that for a moral relativism that considers all cultural norms and practices just fine, thank you. The treatment of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban (and in other nations still) should never be excused or tolerated as a form of religious expression. It is wrong to deny anyone an education, health care and basic civil rights, and as Americans, we should be unafraid to proclaim that to the world.
How can we change? By ensuring that when the snow melts and the debris clears, we see true transformation. America deserves nothing less.
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