It was supposed to be like any other Tuesday.

I was 13 years old, sitting outside on the breathtakingly beautiful day in between classes, diligently reading my history textbook, when a teacher told a group of us they were calling an immediate emergency schoolwide assembly.

The actual announcement that terrorists had hijacked planes and taken down the World Trade Center towers is a bit of a blur, but the energy and confusion was palpable. My heart burned, my body went numb. We returned to class, speechless.

The air quickly began to smell of burning rubber as the cloud of debris from downtown New York began to linger across the city — my city, my home.

It’s one of those days I’ll never forget where I was, what I was doing, what I was wearing, the struggle to find the right emotions to express exactly what had just happened.

The hallways usually filled with laughter and book bags were now chaotic as students tried desperately to reach their families, but with the fall of the towers cell phone service didn’t work. Others waited in line to use the two pay phones outside the cafeteria, trying to reach their parents, convinced they were dead.

My father found me at school and we zipped up to Westchester County outside of the city. When I finally reached my mother we collapsed into each others’ arms. Everyone in my family was safe.

I woke up every time the emergency horns blared that night. I tried to cry with the thought I would find some relief in tears, but the tears didn’t come until a few days later when it was time to return to school. I was terrified I would discover one of my friends had lost a loved one. I made my mother call my homeroom teacher, and she assured me their families were safe as well.

So when I learned Osama bin Laden had been killed on Sunday, I didn’t feel a sense of relief or a flood of patriotism — I immediately became a 13-year-old again, reliving that September day in New York.

I listened to people’s reactions to the news this week, on the Vineyard and beyond. When I watched clips of people storming the White House on Sunday night, celebrating the victory, I remembered the time I too stormed Pennsylvania avenue on the night the president was elected three years ago. But this felt different and I had trouble making sense of it.

My generation wears many labels — lazy, complacent, jobless — and now some have added 9/11 to the list. We’ve grown up in a world of two wars, not knowing what it means to have a government without a deficit or to be able to fly with normal-sized shampoo bottles.

We didn’t grow up with a constant sense of fear because it was the norm, but the fact is that our parents were terrified and unsure of what was next. We didn’t know anything different, but they did.

I feel a symbolic sort of relief, one where we could perhaps quietly close this chapter and turn our attention to the future. But the reality is seats at dinner tables will still be empty for many families across the country who lost loved ones that day, a void that will never be filled.

For me this week is not a time to rejoice in the death of bin Laden, however ugly, cruel and heartless he may have been, but rather a time to pause and reflect on what we value most as Americans — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.