I Remember

As I sit on the couch tonight in Kuala Lumpur watching CNN, it is hard not to remember exactly where I was ten years ago. I know that the world changed for everyone on that day a decade ago, but for those in New York and DC, it was different.
Ten years ago, I was an elementary school counselor working at Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in Washington D.C. The school was located on 21st street between K and L streets and was the neighborhood school of the White House. Amy Carter attended school there while her father Jimmy Carter served as president. I arrived early for work that day, 7 a.m., and by 8:46 when the first plane hit the World Trade Center, I had already begun my normal daily routine. We had a new social worker who started that day. As we heard about New York and watched on the news that morning in the principal's office, she turned white. I think she had a cousin working in one of the towers. She left the building and never came back. At the time I didn't think much of it, but I wonder what happened to her. As we continued to watch the news on in the office we were horrified when the second tower was hit. And then the unthinkable happened. At 9:37 a.m. a plane hit The Pentagon. It was personal.
The phone started ringing. Parents panicked. The city shut down. The phone didn't stop ringing for the next three hours. Every call brought a rumor. There were stories that the International Monetary Fund, two blocks away, was on fire, that the World Bank, two blocks in the other direction, had been bombed. DC Public schools refused to make a statement or a decision about how to respond. I was the only person in the building with any real crisis training and took lists to the teachers so that they could cross off which students had gone home and with whom. There was so much fear that day. We knew more death would fall from the skies, and when news of Flight 93 broke, we all knew that was the bullet we had dodged.
Around noon my friend Mary returned to the building. She had been to the DC Public Schools office near the Capitol Building. She walked 2 miles in a city gripped with panic. The Metro closed, soldiers were deployed on the streets. DCPS finally made the decision to shut down schools; there were perhaps three or four students left in the building. I remember my drive out of the city. I lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the time, about 10 miles from downtown DC, right up 16th street, the same street as the White House. Everyone fled the city. The line of cars stretched the entire 10 miles. I remember feeling hyper-aware of everything around me, thinking about what I would do if another attack occurred while I drove home. I stopped to buy lunch, as I hadn't eaten since morning and everyone in the restaurant looked equally numb and equally frightened. People didn't talk. People were extremely polite. No one knew what to say; there was nothing that could be said.
As the days after 9/11 passed, DC reeled. My school was within the White House's zone of protection. Motorcades of police cars sped past on regular basis, sirens wailing. From the front steps of the school, I could see a military vehicle with a surface to air missile across the street, perhaps 50 meters from the school playground. It sat there for weeks. There seemed to be a universal feeling amongst all Washingtonians that we had gotten lucky and that surely those that had attacked us with such wrath and purpose could not be satisfied that their plans had gone awry. I lived in DC for another three years and never quite felt that the other shoe wouldn't drop at some time, that another plane would fall from the sky, that a bomb would go off, that something terrible and bloody was yet to come.
Ten years later I have to admit that the events of that September morning still haunt me. I didn't lose a loved one, I have no personal links to victims that died that day. But it was my town, my home, that was attacked that day, a place I lived in and loved and it was personal. A few months ago, while I was still in Denver, I took some students on a field trip. As we got off the bus some of the boys started singing a song about Al Qaeda. I snapped. I never yell at kids, but I let these guys have it. I told them I was in DC that day and that they weren't allowed to glorify the acts of people who forever changed the world I live in and a city that was my home. They didn't quite know what to say. If I had it to do over again, I would tell those boys it's still close to the surface. It probably always will be. I remember. I will always remember.