Remembrances of 9/11 by English 190 Honors Seminar
The Unforgettable Week of My Marriage
The Unforgettable Week of My Marriage
Posted by Persis Karim (course instructor)
9/11 would already be an impossible date to forget, but because I got married five days after that fateful day, it has a special significance for me. September 11th co-mingles my sorrow and my joy, and conjures both the intimacy and personal texture of that week, as well as the more public and horrific feelings that could be read on the faces of everyone I met during that week. The morning of September, 11, I woke up early as I had a class in San Jose. It was the second week of commuting in my third year of teaching at SJSU. I wrote this in the days after the tragedy (I found it recently in a stack of papers) :
At five-thirty, I hear the radio click on. I look at the man who will be my husband in five days.
We’ve had a terrible fight and are worn thin by the preparations of marriage, our fears. This is my first, his second. “Let me make your lunch,” he says. His way of apologizing for so little sleep.“We’ve just received a report that a plane has crashed into one of the World Trade Center Towers.” It’s Bob Edwards’ voice on NPR Morning Edition which sounds strange and panicked, as he tries to make sense of an unimaginable scene relayed to him through another reporter. I am still in the fog of my pre-marital anger.But we hear it again. This time it’s Jackie Lyden standing across the river on the Brooklyn Bridge watching as smoke billows from the first of the Twin Towers to cascade to the ground.
I don’t believe it, but something in my body tenses. I know it’s true. It’s a familiar feeling. I know it from the 1993 World Trade Center, the 1995 Alfred Murrow Federal Building. I wonder all day if they were Arab or Muslim or if they will say the Iranians did this. I have lived with that anxious feeling for more than a decade.
“Are you sure you want to go to work?” he asks.
“Yes, I say, it’s the beginning of the semester. I need to be there.”
On the drive down I listen to radio. When I reach Fremont, a man waves at me from the next lane over.
One of my tires has gone flat and I cannot even feel it. I pull the car over and curse at myself.
I don’t even know how to change a flat tire. It’s never happened before. I exit the freeway and pull over onto a street off the ramp. I open the trunk and pull out the spare, the jack and the wrench.
A man sees me, flummoxed by the task, and apprehensive because of my white shirt and pants. He exits from inside the deli across just off the street and offers to help.
“Yes, please,” I say, “I am embarassed to say, I don’t really know how to change a tire.”
In minutes, he changes the tire, unafraid of the grime and the tools. I am quiet and nervous. He emerges from under the car, his clothes dusty. "All done," he says wiping his hands on his apron. I thank him profusely and look straight into his eyes. We both know something has happened. “Thank you for your kindness,” I tell him.
In minutes, he changes the tire, unafraid of the grime and the tools. I am quiet and nervous. He emerges from under the car, his clothes dusty. "All done," he says wiping his hands on his apron. I thank him profusely and look straight into his eyes. We both know something has happened. “Thank you for your kindness,” I tell him.
At noon, the university cancels classes. By now, most of the instructors have seen the footage of the second airplane crashing into the second tower on our computer monitors. In a daze, I drive home to a sky empty and shatteringly blue. Craig and I wrestle with whether to go on with the ceremony that is scheduled for Sunday. We do not know if it is right to continue a joyful occasion in the midst of such sorrow. We cry, we call our parents, friends and seek advice and solace. No one knows quite what to say. By Wednesday, we realize there will be no out-of-town guests who would have been flying.
All air traffic has ceased, the country is stunned. We know that there will be war.
And so, we decide in a time of war, there must be love.
So on September 16, 2001, we tie the knot, knowing that everyone who witnesses our union is there for something more than us.
A Rude Awakening
Posted by Meggyn Watkins
I was eleven years old, living on a quiet cul-de-sac in suburbia with my teenaged sister and two parents who hated one another. The house was quiet, and from my bed I could hear the low mumble of the morning news as my father ate breakfast before he left for work. Dozing in and out of slumber, I paid no attention to the footsteps that marched toward the back of the house until my bedroom door was flung open.
Obediently padding down the hallway after him, my father came to a halt in front of the television. He must have said something at that point, but all I can recall is the hard set to his mouth and angry glare in his eyes as he pointed at the screen. Over and over again, tiny insects crashed into the impossibly tall World Trade Center towers, causing bright flashes and giant mountains of smoke. My father's rough fingers dug into my shoulders, tearing my eyes from the coverage as he whipped me to face him, and he bent over to look me in the eyes.
"We could all die today, Meggie," he proclaimed, before marching out of the living room and disappearing through the dining room into the back wing of the house. I remained standing, horrified and transfixed by the television, simultaneously understanding that this was an event happening to real people on the other side of the country yet unable to comprehend how something of this magnitude could be anything other than a fictional film.
"We're at war! We're at war!" I faintly heard my father holler, waking my mother to the sunny morning with a slam of their bedroom door and a shock to the system.
An indeterminable amount of time later, she slipped into the room and stood beside me at my post in the living room. Quietly, we watched the towers fall again and again, her arm draped around my shoulders as she held me to her side.
After I'd been dropped off at my middle school, I stood outside with a group of friends and told them what my father had said to me. I was all the rage: a fountain of knowledge to curious and confused classmates who had been forbidden from watching television that morning. Repeating my father's words — "We're going to die!" — elicited attention from almost everyone within hearing range, including my teacher.
From where she stood nearby, quietly overlooking a class of eleven year olds and faced with a grievous national crisis in her first year of teaching, my teacher overheard the fear mongering that I was spreading and pulled me aside to chastise me. She dragged me into the classroom and sat me at a desk, isolated away from all the classmates who kept wanting to hear more, until class began.
We didn't learn anything in class that day, but instead were assigned to journal about our experiences and feelings about the events that had transpired that morning. I spent the entire time feeling fraught with guilt over my performance that morning, confusedly writing and rewriting an apology to my teacher.
What Was It Like?
Posted by Debra Hunter
The first thing I remember about that day is looking out my bedroom window and seeing that the sky was very blue: a perfect, cloudless, California blue. I saw that same blue sky over Arlington, Virginia, after I got out of bed to answer the phone and switched on the television as my husband urged me to “turn on CNN, it’s Channel 69, hurry up, a plane flew into the World Trade Center.” I was confused because CNN was showing an image of the burning Pentagon, and I told him “no, no, it’s not the World Trade Center, it’s the Pentagon,” and then the world tilted at around 6:50 AM Pacific Time when my husband replied “no, planes have flown into both of them, they say it’s a terrorist attack, someone’s attacking us, planes are going down.”
CNN switched its coverage to the World Trade Center towers, burning furiously against that absurdly blue sky. I watched and wondered why I didn’t see any helicopters, and when were they going to rescue all of those people trapped above the fires? A few moments later the windows of the South Tower flashed brightly in the sunlight and slipped towards the ground. I had the oddest thought: my mind raced back to the first Star Wars movie, to the scene where the planet of Alderaan is destroyed by the Death Star and Obi Wan Kenobi, sensing the disaster, collapses into a chair and says “it is as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were silenced at once.” I knew that I had just seen hundreds, if not thousands, of people die and I remember holding onto the door frame that I was standing next to because I wanted to collapse, too.
Later that morning I took my son and daughter to school. Nobody went into the classrooms. Teachers and parents mingled in the school courtyard, talking and sharing the little that we knew of what had happened. The teachers were too upset to teach and none of the parents wanted to leave their children, so the school day was cancelled. A friend and I took our children to lunch at McDonalds (an oddly comforting bit of normal) and then went to her house where we found her husband waiting. While the children played upstairs, thankfully oblivious to what was going on, the adults watched television. I’ll never forget the images. Over and over we saw videos of the second plane crashing into the tower, the smoking ruins in Manhattan, the hole in the ground in Pennsylvania, and the decimated Pentagon. We talked continuously but our eyes never left the television, because we could not stop watching. Maybe we thought if we saw it enough times we could somehow make sense of what we were seeing and what had happened that day.
I could not sleep that night. This was the worst part: I could not stop wondering, what was it like? What was it like for those people on the planes, the people in the buildings, and all of the people who were now husbandless, childless, or friendless? The different combinations of grief were infinite and overwhelming. This sadness continued for a long time. Just when I thought I had heard the worst story from that day, I would hear another even more horrible and the pain would come again. It still happens.
Just Tuned In
Posted by Erma Halili
Like any other school morning as a seventh grader, I made it from my bed to first period PE without a glance at the TV, a skim through the papers or a peep from the radio. I should mention that I didn't know then what the World Trade Center looked like. I doubt that I had given thought to the term "terrorism" before. We lined up by the track for attendance, a considerable distance from the loudspeakers which transmitted barely audible morning announcements of school events, reminders and warnings. I could only work out words of strength and unity, not thinking that anything was seriously amiss until the announcement went into its fifth minute. It ended with a two-minute silence and the Pledge of Allegiance which was normally reserved for Fridays. At this point, I really had to ask someone.
"Someone bombed the World Trade Center."
Subsequent class periods repeated the earlier solemn calls for togetherness and reflection during a time of crisis, but offered little more than a breaking news headline. I knew that my friends were chronic fibbers, so there was no use there.
We weren't a news-watching family, but I came home to CNN and remained glued in front of the TV for the entire day, not missing a minute of the commentary and footage playing in an infinite loop. I took in the physical and symbolic immensity of the Twin Towers. I heard the accounts of people jumping from that height to avoid a burning end. I couldn't imagine what that could've been like, to be faced with that decision, and yet at the same time, I couldn't help but to think of it.
Extended family paid visits throughout the late afternoon. It was sunny and warm, surreally nice, and the adults were out on the patio expressing their fears and disbelief in subdued murmurs rather than the usual vigorous yelling-over-each-other. Back then, I couldn't remember a news event that compelled them all to come together and share reactions. There hasn't even been such a gathering since.
Coming home from school and settling down in front of the news while doing homework became a ritual for the next few months. I began to set the sleep timer on the TV and fall asleep to the 11 o'clock news as newscasters talked about the cleanup and speculated about war. Just as some people can't sleep in complete darkness, I still can't sleep in complete silence. I was initially both afraid and puzzled by that fear. I was safe in California, thankful that none of my family or friends were in New York. But weeks wore on, everyone was still scared.
Sharing the Pain
Posted by Deena Majeed
What bonds many Americans regarding the events of 9/11 is that almost everyone can remember exactly what they were doing on that day. On that day, I was eleven years old, in the sixth grade, and living in Connecticut, which was only an hour's drive away from New York City. I remember I was in school at that time and we were given an early dismissal. Naturally, we were excited to be going home. We were not told why we were being sent home. I did not find out exactly what happened until I came home and turned on the TV. It was then that I realized that something was terribly wrong as I watched the smoke, fire and ashes erupting from the towers. I saw the bodies falling as the people jumped out of the buildings. I was terrified and I didn't understand. My parents, who both came to America from Palestine about twenty years ago, were also unable to understand what was happening.
It was not until the next couple of days at school when I began to hear the name "Osama bin Laden." I remember thinking, why does he have an Arabic name like me? I remember being too young to put the pieces together then and it wasn't until many, many years later where I was able to understand the true implications of how 9/11 affected Muslim-Americans. I consider my family and I to be lucky because we did not receive much negative response after the events. My family tried their best to blend in. My mother and most of the women in my family did not wear the hijab (headscarf). My uncle bought American flags and put it on his car and in front of his house. It seems as if we all just wanted to identify with the rest of America. We wanted them to understand that their pain of 9/11 is our pain as well since we are Americans too.
I feel that the events of 9/11 and the aftermath of how Muslims, the Middle East and Islam is viewed is affecting me today more than ever. Ten years ago I was too young to understand how the world works. Today I still don't understand how the world works, but I do know more than I knew ten years ago. I know that it is more than the "good guys versus the bad guys" because in the Middle East there are many good guys and just a few bad guys that are giving everyone else a bad reputation. I know that America is still engaged in two wars in the Middle East that have wreaked havoc on both Afghanistan and Iraq. I know that 9/11 was a tragic, unforgettable event in which its effects are continually resonating today and will continue to do so for many years.
The New Normal
Posted by Noelle Blicha
Two weeks before September 11th had been marked by a momentous occasion in my fourteen-year-long life; fourteen days prior I had begun High School at a brand new school, thirty minutes from all of the friends and familiar faces I'd grown up with. I was still learning the ropes and learning names on the Tuesday that everything changed.
I'd gotten up at 6:45 like I did every morning, brushing my teeth to the hum of the TV quietly on in the living room. My seventeen-year-old brother passed me in the hall, mentioning "some sort of plane accident" being covered. I spit, rinsed, put on my glasses and wandered out into the glow of the TV where even the news reporters were still trying to figure out what had happened. I sat down on the edge of the couch as the face on the screen told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The towering skyscrapers were as foreign to me in my small town where the tallest building was the Granary at the Feed and Grain, as the words "terrorist attack," words that suddenly everyone seemed to be shouting.
My mother came out in her pajamas and sat next to me, my dad in his chair; my brother the only one who continued to get ready for his day. I remember seeing the second plane penetrate the second tower; I remember the glass window panes that twinkled like confetti as the building exploded. I remember watching the ants jump from the building (those couldn't have been people; it couldn't have been real).
I was fourteen and had never imagined that anything so heinous was possible. I'd read in textbooks of military attacks and World Wars, but nothing had ever been real for me, until the morning of September 11th, when suddenly everything evil and horrifying was real and happening.
My mom and I sat on the couch, crying because we had no idea what else to do. My mom was certain World War III had just begun and my brother left for school, perturbed, but not enough so to let it make him late. With one arm around me, my mom used her other hand to call my school, to excuse me from class for the day. No one asked questions, no one made any trouble. All the rules had changed.
In the days that followed, the unfortunate reality that we were all living changed from bad to worse with rumors of war and the new fear that any of us could drop dead just from opening a letter in the mail. The TV in the living room was always on, never letting our adrenaline go down, never letting us forget for a minute, never letting life get back to normal. But after September 11th it had seemed that the world had gone crazy, and no one knew what normal was anymore.
The New Normal
Posted by Noelle Blicha
Two weeks before September 11th had been marked by a momentous occasion in my fourteen-year-long life; fourteen days prior I had begun High School at a brand new school, thirty minutes from all of the friends and familiar faces I'd grown up with. I was still learning the ropes and learning names on the Tuesday that everything changed.
I'd gotten up at 6:45 like I did every morning, brushing my teeth to the hum of the TV quietly on in the living room. My seventeen-year-old brother passed me in the hall, mentioning "some sort of plane accident" being covered. I spit, rinsed, put on my glasses and wandered out into the glow of the TV where even the news reporters were still trying to figure out what had happened. I sat down on the edge of the couch as the face on the screen told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The towering skyscrapers were as foreign to me in my small town where the tallest building was the Granary at the Feed and Grain, as the words "terrorist attack," words that suddenly everyone seemed to be shouting.
My mother came out in her pajamas and sat next to me, my dad in his chair; my brother the only one who continued to get ready for his day. I remember seeing the second plane penetrate the second tower; I remember the glass window panes that twinkled like confetti as the building exploded. I remember watching the ants jump from the building (those couldn't have been people; it couldn't have been real).
I was fourteen and had never imagined that anything so heinous was possible. I'd read in textbooks of military attacks and World Wars, but nothing had ever been real for me, until the morning of September 11th, when suddenly everything evil and horrifying was real and happening.
My mom and I sat on the couch, crying because we had no idea what else to do. My mom was certain World War III had just begun and my brother left for school, perturbed, but not enough so to let it make him late. With one arm around me, my mom used her other hand to call my school, to excuse me from class for the day. No one asked questions, no one made any trouble. All the rules had changed.
In the days that followed, the unfortunate reality that we were all living changed from bad to worse with rumors of war and the new fear that any of us could drop dead just from opening a letter in the mail. The TV in the living room was always on, never letting our adrenaline go down, never letting us forget for a minute, never letting life get back to normal. But after September 11th it had seemed that the world had gone crazy, and no one knew what normal was anymore.
Unknown Until Now
Brittany Bond-Braatz
September 11th began like any other day for me. I got up when my body decided it was time for me to wake up, probably several hours later than most of my peers would have, and headed out to eat a leisurely breakfast. Unlike most of the children my age, I was home-schooled and spent the majority of my day in my own home with my younger siblings and parents. I didn’t see my mom or father while I had breakfast, but I didn’t think anything of it. After I ate, I got out my textbooks and began to teach myself algebra as my younger siblings sat across the dining table and began their work as well. I had no idea that anything was wrong until my mom came in from the garage that our dad had converted into his home office. Her face was puffy and red, and I knew that she had been crying. My father was there with her, but my mother’s distress was what captured my attention and my memory years later.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“We’ve been attacked,” she replied with a raspy voice. “We’re probably going to go to war.”
A silence spread across my family. My thoughts felt faster than I could ever remember as I tried to comprehend what my mom had just said. My little brother was only 5 at the time, so he blurted out the first thing that came to his head. “Cool. I like wars.”
Our reaction was like a door slamming. I knew that whatever had happened that war was scary and not good. What if our town was attacked? What if someone in my family had to go to war and die as a soldier?
Later, when my parents had calmed down, they explained to my brother the difference between the fictional wars and battles he saw on TV and those in real life. We gave up on homework that day, and instead I walked over to the house of a friend who was also home-schooled. There, we tried to talk and half-heartedly play in her backyard while her mother’s radio blasted the news nonstop.
Because our family’s TV wasn’t hooked up to cable, I had only the voices on the radio to inform me what had happened. I didn’t see the towers fall that day, or the people jumping from the windows. I didn’t see the planes crash into the first tower, then the second. I had no idea what the World Trade Center was, but I now knew that the towers were in New York, somewhere I had never been. It was difficult for me to comprehend the events that occurred a whole continent away from me when I was only 11. The attacks of 9/11 left me with a nagging fear and worry that would soon be tinged with suspicion towards our government. I didn’t trust the way they reacted, arguing like children over who was wearing flag lapel pins and who wasn’t, making and passing bills that seemed invasive, and using the attack as an excuse to launch more violence overseas. I didn’t see the actual news clips of the plane diving into side of the towers until several years later. Not until then did my fears finally feel fully anchored to the event that touched everyone who was a part of American society.
All Too Real
Niki Lesmeister
The Lesmeister clan is not a family of avid TV watchers, especially during our hectic mornings of sibling rivalry over the bathroom, shoveling in a quick breakfast, mine and my sister’s daily dose of unprovoked teasing from our older brother, and mom pulling at our hair into messy braids and ponytails. However, the morning of September 11th, 2001 was not the loud boisterous morning we were used to. It was not spent in the bathroom as my mom gave into my complicated hair style requests while I stared at her work in the mirror, scrutinizing the vain details and complaining about those “extra lumps” in my ponytail. After all, I was a big girl in the sixth grade, and had a boy to impress.
Those things were not priority on this day.
There was unusual silence in the house, besides the shout of frantic newscasters on the usually turned-off television. My dad had phoned my mom from work to turn on the news. Since we don’t usually utilize the living room in the mornings because we are all in a rush to get ourselves and each other ready, were sitting in a dark living room with the lights off and the news perpetually burning images into my impressionable, young mind of the first tower being hit. Mom was gawking at the screen, inadvertently brushing my hair as I sat at her feet. She was actually brushing my face at this moment because her gaze and undivided attention was fixed on the accounts happening on the screen. We sat in silence for quite some time before mom realized she had to try and comfort and explain some things to me. However, she also needed the comfort and explanation. There wasn’t one.
All that she could tell me was that America was a strong nation and we would pull together to overcome this. She reminded me constantly that thousands of people would be needing our prayers for innumerable reasons: the strength for grieving families who lost innocent loved ones, the hope that bodies will be found and wounded victims will be saved, the wisdom and decision-making powers of government authorities to be prime when it comes to coping with the aftermath of such an atrocity. We always prayed together as a family but these prayers were not to bless our food, to keep the bully at school away from my brother, or other, seemingly more trivial things. These prayers my parents spoke with tensed up faces, their brows furrowed, and sometimes my hand was squeezed a little too tight. These were long, solemn prayers that made me aware that this was no small issue, and though we were safe in our humble home in San Luis Obispo, California, we were not in the least unaffected.
That day, when I got to school, there was quiet and disturbing excitement amongst all the elementary school kids. There was a constant low murmur among us as we waited to enter our classroom for the day. My teacher, Mrs. Elwell, did not assign us any work. She was teetering on the edge of her seat waiting to hear from her brother in New York who sometimes has work in one of the towers. She did hear from him, and he was not working there that day, but it made the event hit too close to home for her and she broke down. We were intended to have a moment of silence after the Pledge of Allegiance, but that moment began to take up the better half of the day. Even the most wayward and rowdy class clowns were able to control themselves for the sake of our poor nerve-wracked teacher.
My mom’s brother, who lives in New York, lost a close friend that day. Although I do not know him personally, seeing my uncle experience that kind of grief helped me understand what much of America was experiencing. This would be future-shaping. This would be life-altering. It was apparent that this was not a foreign tragedy. This was happening to us, and it was all too real.
Last to Know
By Micah Palmer
I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 around 6 a.m. to catch the bus to school in Hawaii. The attack had already happened but none of my family had yet to turn on the T.V. so no one knew. It seemed like a typical Tuesday where I was dreading going to school. I caught the bus around 6:30 a.m. and arrived at school by 7:15 a.m. Before the bus had even got to the drop-off location, the security guard approached our bus driver and informed him that there was no school, and to take us all back to our homes. The parking lot was empty and I was surprised that no one else on my bus including the driver had known about the day off. I was thrilled that school was closed, but had no idea why. I’m not sure I even cared to know the reason at the time, never imagining it could’ve been for reasons at terrible as it turned out to be. When I got back home I remember being on the phone with a girl I was hoping to date.
I remember being happy that day. When I walked into the living room I saw my dad in front of the T.V. with a somber look on his face as the images of the 2nd plane hitting the tower was broadcasted. I continued talking on the phone without really putting together the pieces of what was happening. For all I knew it was just another glimpse of the typical terror that the news media was broadcasting daily. I remember seeing the war images on T.V. during the Gulf War and Kosovo War and I just thought that this was what the news was about all the time. I didn’t really ever watch the news so I had nothing else to compare the events of 9-11 to except those images I had seen years before. When I finally got off the phone I sat with my father and watched the destruction on the T.V. It was horrible, I knew that, but being on the isolated island of Hawaii, I felt so detached from it all. I don’t remember crying or being utterly shocked until I saw the images of people jumping out of the building to their death. That was when I really began to internalize the tragedy I was seeing. It was horrible to watch and I was sickened by what I had seen. What had begun as a normal Tuesday morning full of dread about school had suddenly turned into a heart wrenching realization that America was under attack and that was why the schools were closed. It made me realize the magnitude of the situation because a tragedy in New York had impacted me all the way in Hawaii. I had a strange feeling my life would be changed forever from this day forward. I had no idea how powerfully the events of that day would continue to influence the course of my life as an indirect consequence of the new war America was suddenly and viciously thrust into.
Crumbling Childhood
Posted by Lisa Alway
Middle school is hell, there’s no avoiding it. Many of us have been stuck in that most awkward stage of life segregated for three years merely trying to survive this social experiment some call junior high. Within this cesspool, adolescents between the ages of 11 and 14 try to inflict pain on their peers in the hopes that they’ll eventually feel better about themselves. It is within my personal middle school experiment that the events of September 11th, 2001 took place.
September 11th, 2001 was the defining day that my innocence was shaken at its core, the day my childhood began crumbling to the ground as I watched those towers crumble.
It was only the dog, the two cats and me at home that morning. I was raised in a single-parent household and my mom had already left around 6am to start her workday at the hospital. My brother, who was going through his “I hate the world and thus my mother” stage, had been living with my frequently absent father for about a year. To wake myself up and to fill the void of my quiet house, I tuned in to Z95.7 on my shower radio to listen to the mindless chatter of Jean and Julie as they discussed celebrity sleaze and traffic reports. As I lathered my hair with the shampoo of tangy, green apple scent, the somber voices of the radio couple Jean and Julie announced the events as the first plane plummeted into one of the Twin Towers.
“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “that must have been a low-flying plane. Those twin buildings in Oakland are pretty short.” Of course, in the brain of a twelve-year-old girl, I recalled the nearest “twin” buildings I could think of, which happened to be in Oakland. I was utterly confused by the events that were unfolding and the radio announcers were just as lost. Smoke billowing from the skyscraper windows, people in lower Manhattan stricken by the accident (well, at least now I knew it wasn’t in the Bay Area), fire ripping through the iconic building. My hometown is right next to the Oakland International Airport and the one sound that I will never forget as I rode my bike to school that morning was silence. The sounds of airplanes taking off and landing had been mixed-in with the natural sounds of birds chirping and wind blowing, but on that day, the engine noises were missing and would not be found for the next few days. By the time I reached the school, the second tower had been hit. It was chaos on campus. Students were crying and holding each other, cars were double parked as parents crowded the main office for reassurance from the administrators, and I secured my bike before rushing to my first class.
As I opened the door, the room was left dark and the glow of the TV screen was illuminated on the faces of my classmates. Looking up at the screen in a mindless state, I saw the Twin Towers crumble to the ground in a cloud of ominous smoke.
Brittany Bond-Braatz
September 11th began like any other day for me. I got up when my body decided it was time for me to wake up, probably several hours later than most of my peers would have, and headed out to eat a leisurely breakfast. Unlike most of the children my age, I was home-schooled and spent the majority of my day in my own home with my younger siblings and parents. I didn’t see my mom or father while I had breakfast, but I didn’t think anything of it. After I ate, I got out my textbooks and began to teach myself algebra as my younger siblings sat across the dining table and began their work as well. I had no idea that anything was wrong until my mom came in from the garage that our dad had converted into his home office. Her face was puffy and red, and I knew that she had been crying. My father was there with her, but my mother’s distress was what captured my attention and my memory years later.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“We’ve been attacked,” she replied with a raspy voice. “We’re probably going to go to war.”
A silence spread across my family. My thoughts felt faster than I could ever remember as I tried to comprehend what my mom had just said. My little brother was only 5 at the time, so he blurted out the first thing that came to his head. “Cool. I like wars.”
Our reaction was like a door slamming. I knew that whatever had happened that war was scary and not good. What if our town was attacked? What if someone in my family had to go to war and die as a soldier?
Later, when my parents had calmed down, they explained to my brother the difference between the fictional wars and battles he saw on TV and those in real life. We gave up on homework that day, and instead I walked over to the house of a friend who was also home-schooled. There, we tried to talk and half-heartedly play in her backyard while her mother’s radio blasted the news nonstop.
Because our family’s TV wasn’t hooked up to cable, I had only the voices on the radio to inform me what had happened. I didn’t see the towers fall that day, or the people jumping from the windows. I didn’t see the planes crash into the first tower, then the second. I had no idea what the World Trade Center was, but I now knew that the towers were in New York, somewhere I had never been. It was difficult for me to comprehend the events that occurred a whole continent away from me when I was only 11. The attacks of 9/11 left me with a nagging fear and worry that would soon be tinged with suspicion towards our government. I didn’t trust the way they reacted, arguing like children over who was wearing flag lapel pins and who wasn’t, making and passing bills that seemed invasive, and using the attack as an excuse to launch more violence overseas. I didn’t see the actual news clips of the plane diving into side of the towers until several years later. Not until then did my fears finally feel fully anchored to the event that touched everyone who was a part of American society.
All Too Real
Niki Lesmeister
The Lesmeister clan is not a family of avid TV watchers, especially during our hectic mornings of sibling rivalry over the bathroom, shoveling in a quick breakfast, mine and my sister’s daily dose of unprovoked teasing from our older brother, and mom pulling at our hair into messy braids and ponytails. However, the morning of September 11th, 2001 was not the loud boisterous morning we were used to. It was not spent in the bathroom as my mom gave into my complicated hair style requests while I stared at her work in the mirror, scrutinizing the vain details and complaining about those “extra lumps” in my ponytail. After all, I was a big girl in the sixth grade, and had a boy to impress.
Those things were not priority on this day.
There was unusual silence in the house, besides the shout of frantic newscasters on the usually turned-off television. My dad had phoned my mom from work to turn on the news. Since we don’t usually utilize the living room in the mornings because we are all in a rush to get ourselves and each other ready, were sitting in a dark living room with the lights off and the news perpetually burning images into my impressionable, young mind of the first tower being hit. Mom was gawking at the screen, inadvertently brushing my hair as I sat at her feet. She was actually brushing my face at this moment because her gaze and undivided attention was fixed on the accounts happening on the screen. We sat in silence for quite some time before mom realized she had to try and comfort and explain some things to me. However, she also needed the comfort and explanation. There wasn’t one.
All that she could tell me was that America was a strong nation and we would pull together to overcome this. She reminded me constantly that thousands of people would be needing our prayers for innumerable reasons: the strength for grieving families who lost innocent loved ones, the hope that bodies will be found and wounded victims will be saved, the wisdom and decision-making powers of government authorities to be prime when it comes to coping with the aftermath of such an atrocity. We always prayed together as a family but these prayers were not to bless our food, to keep the bully at school away from my brother, or other, seemingly more trivial things. These prayers my parents spoke with tensed up faces, their brows furrowed, and sometimes my hand was squeezed a little too tight. These were long, solemn prayers that made me aware that this was no small issue, and though we were safe in our humble home in San Luis Obispo, California, we were not in the least unaffected.
That day, when I got to school, there was quiet and disturbing excitement amongst all the elementary school kids. There was a constant low murmur among us as we waited to enter our classroom for the day. My teacher, Mrs. Elwell, did not assign us any work. She was teetering on the edge of her seat waiting to hear from her brother in New York who sometimes has work in one of the towers. She did hear from him, and he was not working there that day, but it made the event hit too close to home for her and she broke down. We were intended to have a moment of silence after the Pledge of Allegiance, but that moment began to take up the better half of the day. Even the most wayward and rowdy class clowns were able to control themselves for the sake of our poor nerve-wracked teacher.
My mom’s brother, who lives in New York, lost a close friend that day. Although I do not know him personally, seeing my uncle experience that kind of grief helped me understand what much of America was experiencing. This would be future-shaping. This would be life-altering. It was apparent that this was not a foreign tragedy. This was happening to us, and it was all too real.
Last to Know
By Micah Palmer
I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 around 6 a.m. to catch the bus to school in Hawaii. The attack had already happened but none of my family had yet to turn on the T.V. so no one knew. It seemed like a typical Tuesday where I was dreading going to school. I caught the bus around 6:30 a.m. and arrived at school by 7:15 a.m. Before the bus had even got to the drop-off location, the security guard approached our bus driver and informed him that there was no school, and to take us all back to our homes. The parking lot was empty and I was surprised that no one else on my bus including the driver had known about the day off. I was thrilled that school was closed, but had no idea why. I’m not sure I even cared to know the reason at the time, never imagining it could’ve been for reasons at terrible as it turned out to be. When I got back home I remember being on the phone with a girl I was hoping to date.
I remember being happy that day. When I walked into the living room I saw my dad in front of the T.V. with a somber look on his face as the images of the 2nd plane hitting the tower was broadcasted. I continued talking on the phone without really putting together the pieces of what was happening. For all I knew it was just another glimpse of the typical terror that the news media was broadcasting daily. I remember seeing the war images on T.V. during the Gulf War and Kosovo War and I just thought that this was what the news was about all the time. I didn’t really ever watch the news so I had nothing else to compare the events of 9-11 to except those images I had seen years before. When I finally got off the phone I sat with my father and watched the destruction on the T.V. It was horrible, I knew that, but being on the isolated island of Hawaii, I felt so detached from it all. I don’t remember crying or being utterly shocked until I saw the images of people jumping out of the building to their death. That was when I really began to internalize the tragedy I was seeing. It was horrible to watch and I was sickened by what I had seen. What had begun as a normal Tuesday morning full of dread about school had suddenly turned into a heart wrenching realization that America was under attack and that was why the schools were closed. It made me realize the magnitude of the situation because a tragedy in New York had impacted me all the way in Hawaii. I had a strange feeling my life would be changed forever from this day forward. I had no idea how powerfully the events of that day would continue to influence the course of my life as an indirect consequence of the new war America was suddenly and viciously thrust into.
Crumbling Childhood
Posted by Lisa Alway
Middle school is hell, there’s no avoiding it. Many of us have been stuck in that most awkward stage of life segregated for three years merely trying to survive this social experiment some call junior high. Within this cesspool, adolescents between the ages of 11 and 14 try to inflict pain on their peers in the hopes that they’ll eventually feel better about themselves. It is within my personal middle school experiment that the events of September 11th, 2001 took place.
September 11th, 2001 was the defining day that my innocence was shaken at its core, the day my childhood began crumbling to the ground as I watched those towers crumble.
It was only the dog, the two cats and me at home that morning. I was raised in a single-parent household and my mom had already left around 6am to start her workday at the hospital. My brother, who was going through his “I hate the world and thus my mother” stage, had been living with my frequently absent father for about a year. To wake myself up and to fill the void of my quiet house, I tuned in to Z95.7 on my shower radio to listen to the mindless chatter of Jean and Julie as they discussed celebrity sleaze and traffic reports. As I lathered my hair with the shampoo of tangy, green apple scent, the somber voices of the radio couple Jean and Julie announced the events as the first plane plummeted into one of the Twin Towers.
“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “that must have been a low-flying plane. Those twin buildings in Oakland are pretty short.” Of course, in the brain of a twelve-year-old girl, I recalled the nearest “twin” buildings I could think of, which happened to be in Oakland. I was utterly confused by the events that were unfolding and the radio announcers were just as lost. Smoke billowing from the skyscraper windows, people in lower Manhattan stricken by the accident (well, at least now I knew it wasn’t in the Bay Area), fire ripping through the iconic building. My hometown is right next to the Oakland International Airport and the one sound that I will never forget as I rode my bike to school that morning was silence. The sounds of airplanes taking off and landing had been mixed-in with the natural sounds of birds chirping and wind blowing, but on that day, the engine noises were missing and would not be found for the next few days. By the time I reached the school, the second tower had been hit. It was chaos on campus. Students were crying and holding each other, cars were double parked as parents crowded the main office for reassurance from the administrators, and I secured my bike before rushing to my first class.
As I opened the door, the room was left dark and the glow of the TV screen was illuminated on the faces of my classmates. Looking up at the screen in a mindless state, I saw the Twin Towers crumble to the ground in a cloud of ominous smoke.
Remembrance
Posted by Melissa Lopez
I was eleven when the first plane crashed. I hadn’t just turned eleven, I had been eleven for a while, but it occurs to me now that I happened to be eleven on September 11th. The thing about being eleven the day that a major tragedy occurs in your country—particularly when it’s on the opposite side of said country—is that things don’t quite fit. I walked into my pre-algebra class with a sense of dread that had nothing to do with burning buildings; I was a little kid that wasn’t terribly fond of numbers. 9 and 11, however, are numbers that everyone in America has become well acquainted with.
There was a classmate standing in the doorway, eyes open wide but not really seeing, not comprehending, and although we weren’t friends they rushed out the words to me in a way that instantly connected us. “Someone crashed planes into the Twin Towers!”
I was eleven. I was from California. These words instantly jolted me into a world I would never fully come to understand, and I felt pulled into the darkened classroom towards the glow of the television. A bright blue sky, two all buildings, news reels…and a plane. The baby blue of the sky made the scene all the more grim, and all the more surreal.
“What are the Twin Towers?” I asked. It was a question I asked the entire day, but nobody gave me a straight answer. None of my peers knew, except that they were two of the tall buildings in New York. Vague mentions of the Pentagon were tossed in there from time to time, but otherwise those two buildings I had never heard of were seen all day on the TV screens in my classrooms.
The situation was frightening for those who understood, and for those who didn’t there was a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Who wanted to hurt us? Would we get out of class? Will anyone get these cards we’re making for the victims? Will they even care?
The day passed on in a wondering blur, and a moment of silence was held for the victims on the grassy field. Silence that nobody understood, but everyone accepted. Even from the looks on the teachers’ faces—trepidation, uncertainty—we knew the answers would be slow in coming.
We were shoved into a sense of reality when our English teacher popped the bubble of our confused nightmarish haze. She turned off the TV. We asked why, and she told us that we’d had enough of watching that tragedy over and over again on replay. She told us we needed to get back to work—school wasn’t over yet. I think she meant that life wasn’t over yet. Not for us. She pushed us into our routine; she kept us moving away from the uncertainty into what we knew—the rules of the classroom. Read, discuss, write, hands raised, questions asked—questions that our teacher knew the answers to.
That was important, in retrospect. Move away from horror, don’t forget, but move along through it.
