They say All Americans know what they were doing that morning. My memories are here: a new teacher, a worried mother and a robotic urge to continue...
It was my first year with a classroom all
to myself (I was the teacher after a long stint as a teacher's aid). I'd spent the last month getting a classroom ready
to receive 13 gifted and talented kids who would call the room “my class” for
the next year.
That morning my own kids, Vince and Alicia, were getting ready for
school and I was trying to not be late- getting ready in my room as quickly as
possible. I had agreed be carpool for Justin, another student whose mother worked early downtown. I was busy thinking how I would get my two teenagers mobile, loaded into our van, and pick up Justin - and stay on schedule.
Somehow we were all on time
and as we made our way to Justin’s, we were fairly silent. Mornings have never been a chatty time for me - even after two cups of coffee.
My cell phone rang and I answered it – it was
Mario.
“Where are you?” he asked. He sounded
panicked.
“On my way to pick up Justin,” I said. My first thought was that someone died. My second thought was that he was being called
out to some riot or skirmish (he had a high-profile job with the Department of
Justice).
“Pull over.”
I pulled over, dutifully. By the looks on their faces, the kids could
hear what their dad was saying. They
were attentive to his voice on the other end of my small cell phone, since he
was speaking so loudly.
“Okay,” I said as my van idled on a random
corner that overlooked the back of Justin’s house.
“The World Trade Center has been hit,” he
said. Hit? How?
My ears started ringing. Mario’s parents were New Yorkers. My first thought was them, then I needed to
know more….
“How?” I asked.
“A plane crashed into the North Tower and
then another one crashed into the South Tower,” he said.
Okay…no accident.
Attack.
Terrorism.
In a flash of information that fluttered
like confetti in my mind I remembered
the attacks years before- the WTC was targeted by Muslim extremists. The Jewish Banking System’s capital was there
and things had been heating up between the oil dependent USA and the oil providing
Middle East.
That morning we realized how vulnerable we
all were.
I could hear a commotion from Mario's side of the phone. “Both Towers have collapsed.”
Collapsed?
What did that mean?
I felt slapped in the face, but I faced the
kids, who were looking at me. “The World
Trade Center was hit by two airplanes,” I said.
“And the Pentagon,” Alicia said. She knew something I didn’t and the news didn’t
seem as surprising to her.
“What!?” I asked, panic now in my voice. Mario was still in my ear on my phone. “The Pentagon, too?” I asked both of them.
“YES!” Mario said. “The Pentagon, too.” HE was distracted – I could tell he was
watching news reports – probably with others in his office.
“Were you watching TV this morning?” I
asked Alicia. Yep…there I was in the
middle of a National tragedy, chiding my daughter for breaking the rules that
morning in our house: No TV before school.
“Yes,” she answered. I nodded, but I looked back at Vince. The news was surprising to him, but he looked
at the clock and then back at me. We
were going to be late for school.
“I have to go,” I said to Mario. I was in shock but I knew I had to be there
for the kids in my classroom – for their families. I had to pick up Justin. I had to get the kids to their
classrooms. I really saw the future as
the next half-hour of my life. Pull the car away from the curb, pick up Justin, get to school, get the game plan from our principal....
“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Mario said, breaking me out of my fog. He was coming home...maybe I would be as well. Either way, we would all soon be
home- all of us together. Safe and not
safe – together.
Justin knew what was going on and started
to talk about it in the van. It gave us
all license to speculate what had happened.
All of us seemed to know it was a terrorist attack and that this was just the beginning. School would be a good and normal place for all of them to process this thing together - teens need peers to process.
By comparison, I was going to a classroom
of kids whose main support were their parents.
I would be the “delivery system of normal and safe.” I was trained
to be a safe and steady entity as a teacher. Would any of them be
there?
We had drills for fire, earthquakes and
floods. We even had emergency drills for
school shootings now. What we didn’t
have was emergency drills for terrorist attacks coming from the sky – no one in
the USA did then….
I drove to school, my heart in my throat
and a feeling of wariness. I had to get to school. What would I do? What would I say to the kids in my classroom? What had they seen already? What had they heard?
I drove, carefully. I tried to react to everything carefully - I was determined not to have an accident.
I arrived at school, the parking lot bustling with familiar scenes: kids dashing to the halls to chat with each other, parents dropping off...
I knew better than to demand my kids kiss me before they exited the vehicle. I would check on them later....
I walked toward my classroom, hoping to somehow be given direction on how I should conduct myself that morning. I felt very scared and careful.
That feeling
didn't go away for about three months.
No comments:
Post a Comment