Remembering 9/11

Five years ago this morning, 8:00am found me in my classroom at St. Louis University, trying to rouse the half asleep figures occupying the chairs. I was teaching freshman English, and most of the kids stumbled over from the residence halls still in their pajamas. The class had been meeting for about three weeks, enough time to know that one of my students (is it awful that I don't remember his name?) was habitually late and would do anything in his power to get the discussion off-track. He was a charming kid and I really liked him, but when he ran in five minutes late and told me to turn on the tv because a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, I rolled my eyes and told him to sit down and start writing.

An hour later, when I got in my car, my stomach sank when I realized that the kid was right. I felt like such a jerk-- I had assumed that what I had to accomplish on my agenda (probably discussing some dumb articles about finding "voice" in writing) were so much more important than what was going on in the world.

Like the rest of the nation, I spent the rest of the day glued to the tv. I didn't know anyone who died. But I reflected on how terrified I had been when the World Trade Center was bombed for the first time. I was in high school and my Dad worked in Manhattan. I heard about the bombing on the bus on the way home from school and couldn't get home and call his office fast enough to make sure he was ok. On September 11th, I kept imagining all of the people worried about their loved ones in the city who didn't hear their father's reassuring voice at the other end of the telephone.

Honestly, the bombings affected my day-to-day life very little. Eddie did have to drive to Nashville to pick up his brother, who was stranded there after interviewing for medical school. His brother was sick and cranky and I felt put-upon because I had to babysit him for four or five days until he could get a flight out of town. I had a lot of friends who stayed glued to the tv for weeks after, but I wasn't like that-- after a few days I had had enough and knew I needed to get on with my life. Mostly I just knew that the world my kids lived in would be vastly different than the one I grew up in.

--originally published 9/11/06