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Over the past nine years, I’ve read plenty of remembrance articles on September the 11th. People who were in Manhattan, those who watched it on their television at work, even those who were sitting in their high school classroom watching in astonished horror until their shaken teachers switched it off.

I was ten years old, and was trying on my new dress.

The phone rang, and with ten-year-old expectancy I grabbed it.

“Go, tell your Dad something happened at the World Trade Center.”

“What’s the World Trade Center?”

“Just tell him, please.”

I wasn’t used to the gnawing feeling that comes after an urgent voice tells you to do something, and tacks on please because their fear has driven their pleasantries out of them. I pattered up the stairs, yelling for Dad. It was only 8:30 and work had not begun yet.

“Dad, watch the news. Something happened to the World Trade Centers, Miss Jackie called and told me. What are the World Trade Centers?”

I didn’t know what they were before 8:30 on a crisp autumn morning. I could never forget them after that. Dad turned on the TV, and all I saw was smoke and heard chattering and Jon Scott was telling us that, apparently, a plane had crashed into the Trade Centers.

“How could that plane miss the building, Dad? It’s so big and it isn’t even cloudy outside.” There was no reply. Together, we inched the couch closer to the TV. My mind was working hard inside the construct that the pilot had fallen asleep, or died, or even accidentally looked away for a moment…

“Oh no, Daddy, oh no.”

It came, another sleeping pilot. And he slammed his plane into the other building. For the first time, I felt it–raw, unadulterated fear. It began in my stomach and weaved it’s way up my throat, and for the next two hours, I was welcomed into an adult world where reporters whispered about “terrorism” and “we knew this was coming, the experts told us…”

I couldn’t take much more, so I left and crouched on the tile stairway. Dad found me weeping when he came to look for his companion in tragedy.

“How could they do that, Dad? There were people in those buildings. Why would they do that?”

“Some people are evil, Ariel.” He couldn’t say much more, there wasn’t much more to say. I didn’t understand why. But suddenly, I knew that I’d never be the same. I’d watched people die, without seeing their faces, without hearing their cries for help–but I’d been there, all the same. And I was only ten.

Nine years later, I’ve lived through two wars, terrorism alert levels always above orange, intense airport scanning, and two failed attempts in the last two years to kill more of us. I’ve seen nine ceremonies of remembrance, read books and articles on the nature of terrorism, and wished Bin Laden dead in a cave where he’d hatched the whole horrible thing.

I’m an adult now. I can understand the reasoning of the terrorists, the steps they took to accomplish their goal, and what it meant for national security and how it shook a sleeping country into an acute awareness that pilots don’t just fall asleep. But there is a part of my consciousness that still asks “why?”, the unanswered questions and the thought of what the people that died would look like if they were nine years older than they were on what now we call “Patriot’s Day.”

Are we the patriots, or are the 2, 987 people that died the patriots? Maybe we all are, or were. Are we still?

I’d like to weep again over Patriot’s Day like I did as a ten-year-old. But I can’t quite. Time has removed me from what I thought was irremovable on September 12, 13, 14….but I do want to weep for another reason entirely. I want to weep for the fact that I can’t quite weep anymore. I hate being removed from what changed me forever.

Time heals all wounds, but does it form a callous?

Yesterday, I saw the Constitution.

It was encased in glass, surrounded by a gold frame. The writing was faint and small, but legible, the swirling letters spelling out the supreme law of the land. People crowded together,  side bags separating one person from another, the eager faces leaning forward, unaware or maybe uncaring of the proximity each had to the other.

They wanted to see the Constitution. But why?

After I spent less then two minutes, only 120 seconds staring at the document, I wondered why I was so filled with excitement and wonder. Was it merely because it was over two hundred years old? Was I caught up with a feeling of Americanism? Was the excitement of hundreds of people contagious?

I’m not sure. It could have been one of those factors, it could have been all of them. But what I still want to know is how much of that document I understand. It’s the law that governs my society-but do I know it? While I know the number of children that Angelina Jolie has or how much weight Brittany Spears has lost down to the ounces, I stutter and fumble when I’m confronted with the Commerce Clause.

I don’t like that.

It’s my goal to study the Constitution. To find out, through sources, professionals, rulings, debates and discussion what it contains. How much would we tolerate if we knew what the law required? Who would we elect, and by what criteria would we elect them?

John Adams said,  “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they can not alter the state of facts and evidences”. Often, our views, opinions, political leanings, likes and dislikes dictate our facts-but the opposite must be true. Our political leanings must be based on facts, and our opinions are worth nothing if evidence does not support them.

I want to be an informed citizen, not a political couch-pundit that says a lot but expresses nothing. I can’t expect change unless I know how to bring it about.

The next time I see the Constitution, I want to know what it says and give an adequate answer for why I would crowd with hundreds of citizens for a two minute glimpse.