9/11/11

I wanted to write a really deep and insightful blog today, since it is the tenth anniversary of 9/11... but I'm sure that anything that I could say would only add to what has already been said... so I'll just post what I remember:

I was 15, in biology class at PHS. Mr. Long was out that day and the sub was having a hard time keeping the class in line. Around 9:30 Mrs. Blanchard from next door came rushing in the classroom to tell us that there had been an attack...

School stayed on schedule, but classes did not. We watched recorded footage over and over again of the planes crashing into the towers and the ill-fated flight 93. We saw newcasts and pictures of people jumping out of the trade towers and people running for their lives on the ground. It was terrible. What's amazing to me is that so many students I teach today have little more than a vague idea of what happened, and we're discouraged from showing them footage because "They were too young, and they're too sensitive." And yet I was no older than most of my students, and I and my classmates watched it as it happened...

Were we scared? Heck yes. But more than that, we were angry. Angry that someone would come to our great nation and attempt to destroy our cultural icons, our government and our people. We were sad, too, for the many who died that day trying to survive--and proud of the heroes who gave their lives trying to save others. We grieved, as a nation, for every life lost. And then we banded together. I specifically remember the little town next to ours putting American flags on every lamp post down the central highway. Ten years later, those flags still wave proudly, but many of us don't give them a second glance anymore. We've forgotten what it was like to lose so many. We've forgotten how precious this country seemed to us when we thought we might lose it. We've forgotten so much, and I am included in this.

But today, on the tenth anniversary, I've seen a change in the tides. We're starting to remember again.

I leave with the lyrics from Bruce Springsteen's "Empty Sky" from "The Rising" album which was partially written as a 9/11 album:
"Blood on the streets/ yeah there's blood pouring down
I hear the blood of my blood/ cryin' from the ground...
I want a kiss from your lips/ I want an eye for an eye
I woke up this morning/ to the empty sky..."

Ten years later, I still cry when I think about 9/11 and the cost to our nation. And I still swell with pride when I think about our great country and how we proved that we were stronger than any terrorist threat. We are Americans. And we are still "One nation/ Under God."