September 11th

everywhere i keep seeing the rememberances and the stories about this day 10 years ago. so here is my story.....

the weekend before September 11th was an amazing one. It was spent at the Oregon Coast with some of my closest friends. We had rented a big beach house and held a memorial to honor Roo. Amie had finally moved back to Oregon after Roo's death, and we put together the R.O.M.P (Roo's Oregon Memorial Party) to celebrate Roo's life, and to put his ashes into the Pacific at one of his favourite places, Hug Point. It was a beautiful weekend full of love and debauchery and tears and food, just how Roo would have liked it.

We were back in Portland on the 9th. Some friends flew home on Monday the 10th, and others were to fly home on the 11th. At about 5:50 am on September 11th our home phone rang. It was Edith, Iveris' sister calling to tell us of flight 11 crashing into the North tower. I was in bed when i heard Iveris on the phone, and then the sound of the TV in the living room. I knew something was wrong, no one would call us that early normally, and there was something about Iveris' voice that made me sit up in bed. I went down the stairs to our full living room (we had some people staying with us because of the R.O.M.P) and Iveris told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I think like most people, I thought it was an accident, but as we watched the drama unfold, we learned it was anything but.... I remember feeling like the world had changed instantly. We were all wondering what this meant for us, when would the world go back to normal, if this was just the beginning of something bigger, the world spun out of control.

I had to tear myself away from the TV and get to work. I had about a 45 minute commute to my teaching job, and I was catatonic. NY was my city, the capital of the world, and it had been attacked. I got in my car and turned on Howard Stern instead of NPR. I knew he would have cabbies and people calling in from near the WTC, and it would be uncensored new yorkers. I was about half way to school when the first tower fell. i couldn't believe what i was hearing, i couldn't believe i was supposed to work that day, to stand in front of classes of teenagers acting as if the world was sane, that things would be OK. Somehow i did it. My TV was on all day, we didn't do much in class that day. It is really all a blur, but i do remember the first student to walk into my class. He sat at his desk, looked at me and said "Ms. G, how could this happen?" All i could reply was "i don't know".

I was in a daze, but some things stick with you. How quiet the hallways were at school. The first time you watched the tower fall. The worried eyes of my students. The unraveling of the mystery as to who did it. The pictures of the survivors covered in dust. Video of the throngs of people trying to make it off Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge. Kim worried she wouldn't get back home. The phone calls where you just didn't know what to say. The fear. The hate.

In the weeks following I changed my curriculum so I could teach my students more about what lead to September 11th - The history, the culture, the faith. I had heard too much hate coming out of the mouths of young people to allow lies and misinterpretation rule them. I need them to realize that not all muslims felt the way the terrorists did. For me it had been a terrible time and 2001 is for me a year synonymous with sadness.

10 years later, i feel we are worse off than ever. the "war on terror" has not re-claimed our safety, it has made the world more polarized and has caused the rise of fundamentalism on all sides. friends have died in iraq, and some have come home changed forever. the wounds are still there even if ground zero has been reborn as a memorial to those who died and to our innocence lost.