I did not intend to write this post today.

On September 11, 2001 I awoke in the small studio apartment my fiance and I shared on the 50th floor of a Lake Shore Drive high rise. We were three weeks away from getting married. An airplane had just smashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York City. I had no idea what was going on nor did I have a clue about the day that would soon unfold.

It was a day of fear, of unknowing. But also one of love. Of reaching out and comforting family, friends, neighbors, and strangers. For most of my peers, it was also a day of innocence lost. It was the day most of us in our 20s realized we weren’t invincible. It was the day I realized that tragedy could truly strike anytime, anywhere, and without any warning.

So what made me sit down and write this?

It was this article from the Atlantic “Making September 11 Relevant to Young Learners.” and it made me think about my daughter. My daughter, one of the millions of school age children born after 9/11 who will be learning about this as a historical event as she advances on in school. We seem to be at the precipice of deciding what to teach our children about this day. But as we teach our children about 9/11, what is it we want them to learn from this tragedy?

When you hear people say “never forget” what does it make you think of – what do you still think about today when you look back fifteen years? Is it the sheer loss of life that day? Is it the intensity of the attack itself? Is it the first responders who rushed in to help while everyone was rushing out? Is it the feeling of unity between all citizens in the weeks after? Is it the lessons learned from successes & mistakes made in the fifteen years that followed? Or do you simply remember how we all sat down and cried with Peter Jennings, a country glued to our TVs that Tuesday evening, trying to understand what had happened?

For me it’s all of those and more. But I don’t necessarily want my daughter to learn all of these memories from this day. I don’t need her to learn the pain and the fear this day caused for her parents and our friends. She is already growing up in a world where taking your shoes off at the airport is simply how it’s done – it’s never occurred to her this isn’t “normal.” I don’t want 9/11/2001 to take away her innocence too. Until this morning, I’ve never thought about what I want my daughter to learn about this day. Perhaps it’s because it still feels like it was yesterday – like it’s simply not possible that the time has come for our children to learn about this day in school as a historical event.

So what do I want her to learn? She should learn that in the face of tragedy what comes through is love and people coming together to overcome. She needs to grasp that the results from actions taken in the aftermath of tragedy have consequences (good or bad) and we must learn from the actions of history. As unhappy as it is, she will likely have her own 9/11 that will define her generation. For our Grandparents, it was Pearl Harbor and World War Two. For our parents it was JFK, Vietnam, and the Cold War. For us it was 9/11. I want her to learn from the results of our tragedies.

The pain, the fear, the helpers, the heroes, the love and the loss. None of that is ever forgotten by those who have lived it.