On September 11, 2001, I was still a high school student. I wore braces and was reading The Great Gatsby for the first time and had never heard of al-Qaeda or jihads. There was a telephone call to the classroom, and my teachers brought a television out into the hallway. Initially, none of us really understood the magnitude or gravity of the situation, not that I really do even now, seven years later.

There had been military intervention in Kosovo under the Clinton administration, but I didn’t even know where the Balkans were, unlike New York City, which was not so very far from my small hometown in New Hampshire. The United States had been, in my mind, like the Pope, an infallible, lucky leader sitting on a fat load of wealth. It was infeasible that anyone would be so soft of mind as to attack the United States, not that the possibility was one I had ever considered much.

We watched the Twin Towers fall over and over again in morbid hypnosis that day. The teachers were crying, and we didn’t quite know what to do. I thought about bringing them tissues or picking up The Great Gatsby, but nothing seemed right except watching and waiting.

Seven years later, I’m still watching and waiting, except now I watch and wait for the war in Iraq to end. This year on September 11th, as the presidential election looms ahead, more than ever the day seems freighted with an urgency to escape the pall imposed on Americans by the attacks on the World Trade Center. September 11, 2001 was a day when most of us felt helpless, and I hope that we, as a country, will take our incredible right to vote as a chance at the reclamation of American hope this fall.