9/11/2001

I had just resumed teaching after a 7 year hiatus. I had been nursery director at HUMC, while my son and daughter were finishing preschool,so I could be with my children while they were toddlers. Anyway, my first teaching job was at Dean Rusk Middle School in Cherokee County and that was in 2001. Every morning as a 7th grade teacher, I turned on the TV to a school wide program called "Channel One" which gave the students current events. The programming was interrupted just before 9 am to show live coverage of the towers being hit. The first tower hit was thought to be an accident initially, but I and my 12 year old students saw the second plane intentionally fly into the Trade Center Tower and there was a loud collective gasp. Watching the events unfold, the worst was seeing people jump out of the tower windows to their death. I turned the TV off. I tried to resume our Language Arts plan for the day, but nobody could focus, and I couldn't hold back tears.Dr. Blackwell, our principal, told us to leave our TVs off and act as if nothing happened. Really? My 7C team colleagues and I were visibly stunned, and at that point in the morning, we were all worried that there would be a war in the traditional sense. We took turns having our TV on during our planning periods. So I wanted to call my husband. That became a rigamarole because, everyone wanted to call his/ her spouse, and this was before the ubiquitous cell phone. I waited my turn, called Al, and when he answered he did not know about the occurrence, so it was after 11:00am when he turned on his TV for the first time. He never saw the people jumping out of the buildings, because the networks were not replaying that horror.Later that day, I kept thinking about the phone call Ted Olson received from his wife before the plane she was on crashed into the Pentagon. I tried to imagine if that were a conversation between Al and me. I didn't know anybody personally who was murdered that day, but I have never had such a visceral reaction to a news event. I felt like I was having a panic attack when I started thinking about my 10 year old son and 5 year old daughter. To me, their future safety was in doubt. I wanted to go home and hug my family, but I couldn't. Instead, I hugged many of my students who needed comforting, because they were confused, angry, sad, and stunned. It was a horrible day being played out in most classrooms across America, and the time seemed to drag. I kept thinking how surreal it all was.The school felt like a battle zone mentality , even though we were in Woodstock, Georgia, not New York.Every American was sharing this horrific experience, even if we weren't directly involved. Our country was under attack. Now it's 2013, and twelve years later , there is a whole generation of kids who only see that day as history. My daughter doesn 't remember any events that day except seeing the smoke and burning towers on TV. She sees it " like a movie." I have to say that "Pearl Harbor Day", 12/07/1941, is like that for me. I recognize the seriousness of that horrific event, but I didn't internalize it, because it happened 11 years before I was born, about the same amount of time between 2001 and now. I was thinking about the people , like my dad, who experienced both days. Will I experience another horrific event in my lifetime, too? Sadly, I think I will.