I was 18 years old and it was my first week of Junior College.

“Wake up! You’re going to war!”

She burst through my bedroom, the door swinging into the wall. Wake up, you’re going to war! She shouted again in a kind of teary confusion.

I remember walking out of my bedroom into the loft that overlooked the family room. The TV was loud with breathless news-anchors and “this-just-in” reporting. Mom raced ahead and I rubbed my eyes clean of their sleep. She composed herself and looked at me.

“Two planes just hit some buildings in New York and now I think we’re going to go to war and you’re going to have to go.”

I remember sweating but not much else.

And, in what was probably the most selfish moment of my life – my next thought turned to the Selective Service card I’d mailed just a week before. The government sends out a notice to all males turning age 18. Returning the card is an acknowledgement of the possibility of forced military involvement (and my eligibility for it) should the US need to implement a draft. My birthday is in March, but they give you 6 months to return the card. September 2001 was month-six.

In the weeks before, dad and I would joke about my getting drafted and going into the army. He said I was a prettyboy and we’d both laugh at what kind of soldier I’d be. The army, I thought, was either for guys who want to be in the army or guys who’d knocked up their highschool sweetheart and I was neither. And, there was no war, so there was room for these kinds of jokes.

The news replayed their footage and I watched as their cameras filled with dust and fire and running people. My heart was consumed with a kind of numb curiosity. What would happen now? Were they coming to California? Who are they? Are we going to war? Am I going to war?

It doesn’t feel like that was 10 years ago. I think of everything that’s happened in the past decade, and the clarity with which I recall that morning, I confess that it feels like a film I saw once. The kind that moves more into your memory than into your heart. The numbness of the thousands of miles between California and New York, and the insolation of my selfishness had protected me from fully experiencing the reality of the day.

So, as the years stretched on, as country singers, clothing companies and candidates used the event to move units and gather votes, 9/11 had become a source of shame for me. The way I thought of myself before I thought of the thousands of buried people and broken families.

It might not feel like a decade ago (what’s a decade supposed to feel like, anyway?) but it was, and I’m proud to say that whatever’s happened since then – I’m a little less selfish than I was at 18. I’ve got a long way to go, but because I was in California 10 years ago rather than in one of the Twin Towers, I’ve had a decade’s worth of grace to work with. I’ve known a lot of forgiveness and I’ve given some of it, too.

For me, mom’s benediction still rings, though “wake up, you’re going to war” doesn’t mean a jumpseat on a military plane headed to Iraq. It’s a call into community rather than consumption, it’s a call to cover your exposed skin before my own. It’s an invitation to war against the numbness that so quickly gathers. “Wake up, you’re going to war” means everything to me, because I didn’t have to.