Sept. 11, 2001 was my first day of kindergarten. I remember the day very clearly; maybe because of all of the adults in my life explaining to me in the following days that “I will never forget Tuesday morning.” But I was there, in Manhattan at least, when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. I remember walking into my classroom that morning and meeting my teachers. I remember playing “Uno” on the blue circle carpet with my friends. I remember introductions and Barbie lunch boxes and pattern blocks…all while people were dying in one of the biggest attacks in U.S. history, only miles away. The eeriness of the situation is something that will never leave me.

I didn’t find out about what had happened until I came home that day. With hesitation and the news playing in the background, my mom had explained that bad people had crashed planes into the two tall buildings downtown. It was a weird concept to grasp as a five-year-old, but I remember watching the news all night with my parents until the reality of the situation finally sunk in. I remember crying and being scared and feeling sad. Even at five, I felt like the world was ending. We didn't have school for the next few days. Instead, I spent my time drawing pictures of American flags and dropping them off at my nearby fire station. In the following days, everyone in New York would put American flags in the windows of their apartments. And it was something, to witness everyone trying to do anything they could to make sense of it all.

I was fortunate enough that I didn't know anyone in either building, or on the planes for that matter, but that didn’t mean seeing all the “missing person” posters didn’t affect me. It didn’t mean I didn’t know people who lost a lot, and that didn’t mean I didn’t hear stories. So many stories… Like this girl’s dad who had been in the second tower, and trusted his instinct to leave after the first plane hit, only to later find out the second plane hit directly into his office. Or my friend's mom whose coworkers were in the towers because they were doing her a favor that morning... The flight attendant that was supposed to be on that plane, but slept through her alarm... And the woman who had a blister and stopped in Duane Reade to get a band-aid which made her miss her subway straight to the World Trade center. Then there's my friend, whose father didn’t make it out of the buildings. Or my own grandfather who had seen the entire thing from his office window about a mile away. He told me he was praying that the black dots falling from windows were pieces of debris and not people; and described the towers as sandcastles being knocked down at the beach.

Every Sept. 11 has always been the same in New York: the smoke that covered the city that day 14 years ago still lurks in the air every anniversary. There is always a grim feeling everywhere; we had moments of silence in school for when the planes hit, we had memorials and news coverage to remember those who didn’t make it out that day…and we needed these things. We always needed to remember that day. It was personal, it was emotional, it was important.

Which is why I was surprised that last year, my first 9/11 outside of New York, no one on campus really acknowledged the significance of the day. Brandeis held no vigil, no campus-wide moment of silence, nothing. And maybe that’s because I was a freshman and wasn’t aware of what was going on around campus, or maybe it’s because I wasn’t in New York? New Yorkers take the attack personally, whether they were directly affected or not. My high school English teacher explained it very well one time: “It’s not only that terrorists had come in and attacked this country to make a statement. They came in and attacked our city, our home, our neighborhood!”

But everyone should take the day seriously. After all, we're all American. Although Sept. 11 has already passed this year, in the following years everyone should make more of an effort to commemorate the day. It’s very important to always remember that day, to remember what happened, to remember how it shaped history. Innocent people died for a conflict made up by governments. This year, Brandeis did commemorate the day by setting up American flags on the great lawn. However, I was deeply upset to find out that people rearranged the flags to spell out "Proud of Iraq?" Although it is important to recognize that many innocent people died outside of the U.S. because of the events on the 11th, defacing a memorial to make a snide political statement is not at all ok. Sept. 11 is the day we devote to remembering those who lost their lives in the attacks, and everyone should respect that.

At the end of the day, the 11^th is not a day to argue, or to get angry about. The 11^th is a day for peace, for remembering, for closure. As years go by and the event gets further and further away, the meaning of the day should only get stronger. As cliché as it sounds, it’s important to take the day and remind those you love how much you love them. It's important to keep the memory of those we lost alive. That is how we differentiate the numbers from what they actually were: people. And it’s important to be thankful for how far we have all come since that awful Tuesday, no matter who you are, or where you were on Sept. 11, 2001.