5 Years Later

I had been up all night. Literally. It was my first semester enrolled as a credential student through Cal. State Hayward, and I needed to finish my portfolio and run it across town before I went in to teach. I've never been one to chug coffee to stay alive, so I was running on a kind of supernatural fuel that I can't explain. Having taken a 45-minute cat-nap around 5:00 a.m., I was once again awake and putting the finishing touches on my portfolio. That's when I flipped on the television and witnessed history change.

It was September 11, 2001. My programming of choice was the Today Show. I was working feverishly at my desk because it was almost time to leave...I needed to be at my school by 7:30 a.m., and this detour would take me at least a half an hour. With one eye on the television, I remember thinking what an interesting day this was going to be...not because of what was to come, but simply because I was running on very little sleep. I remember glancing up at the television at the moment Katie Couric was notified of the first airplane hitting New York's World Trade Center. Shock. I turned my full attention to the television and watched on live T.V. as the second airplane was absorbed by the remaining tower. Sick. It's that feeling you get at the very core of your being that assures you life will never be the same. I remember an insatiable urge to know more, watch more, feel more but the demands of my work prevented me from doing so. Too much time already had been spent in front of the television, and now I was late. On went the radio in my car as I sped across town on this errand. It was then that I called my mom and dad to fill them in on the latest news. By the time I would reach my school, both towers would be piles of dust and debris.

My students had no idea what impact this event would have on their generation, our world....and neither did we. It is the hallmark of the new millenium and a new generation of people that will never know what a pre-9/11 world was like. It was crisis mode, and we were operating on a code red. Several parents expressed anxiety leaving their children at the school. Many were picked up early (including a student whose father was a military officer), and several didn't show at all. I can't blame them. I wouldn't have shown if I didn't have to. I distinctly remember one student reporting to me that the White House had been hit. WHAT? Was that true? I had no way of verifying this information, and the students had access to media reports more recently than I. And so shock turned to panic as I operated under the belief that our hub of government had been destroyed, until recess when I got the real story; it was the Pentagon, not the White House (though both ARE white).

On the agenda for our day was an art project including a lesson in drawing skylines. Intentionally, it coincided with our Social Studies lesson on the Statue of Liberty. It was an emotional teaching opportunity as I held up a laminated picture of the New York skyline. Over the next few days, students started picking up catch-phrases from the media coverage and including them in various projects. On a quilt our class put together one student drew two towers and an airplane, while another student crafted the phrase "God Bless You" under an American Flag.

I had the opportunity to visit ground zero less than a year after the tragedy. Once an insurmountable pile of rubble, now a large hole in the ground, visitors and locals alike flocked there to honor the victims of those doomed flights and the heroes that fought so hard to save them. Teddy bears, signs, and pictures covered the chain-link fence that separated us from the destruction. And I felt as ill as I did the day I watched Katie Couric tell me about this place.

For a brief moment in history our country stopped bickering, politicians were united, and God was invited into every public gathering. It was a weight that surely we could not bear on our own...even the godless needed Him. It was a fleeting moment. Here, five years later, we are wrestling again with partisanship and blame-placing. When I get home, I will once again turn on the television, on which the media coverage of this anniversary promises to be extensive. Unfortunately, if precedent is accurate, today's tributes will be littered with angry commentaries directed at this administration's decisions. I hope, for the sake of those who perished on September 11th, that is not the case.