I still can't wrap my mind around it. Seven years later, and it's still unthinkable to me.
It's something that ties us all together. No matter to what degree we were affected by it, I doubt there is one person over the age of 18 who can't tell you where they were that morning when they heard the news. It's indelibly marked for all of us.
I was teaching at Germaine Lawrence at the time. I vividly remember walking the girls to gym class and hearing that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Thinking it was probably a single engine plane that lost control, I used the few minutes of free time that I had to call Jeanna and Paulette back at Riverbend to see what, if anything, they knew of this event. Details were still sketchy at the time, although minute-by-minute a clearer picture was developing. By the time we got back to the dorm, the enormity of it all begin to come into focus. We spent the remainder of the school day trying to focus on classroom tasks, but the girls knew something horrible had happened and needed to begin processing it all. So we gathered them in the TV room and sat down to watch some of the coverage. I spent so much energy trying to help them process something that I had yet to grasp.
As I walked to the bus stop, the world was unusually quiet. No airplanes were in the skies, except for the occasional flyover by the fighter jets that had been scrambled to patrol. My fellow commuters waited quietly on the platforms and then sat in stunned silence on the subway trains. The bus to my neighborhood was detoured around the Westin hotel, because a majority of the bomb units in Boston were parked outside, checking the building since that is where it was discovered that two of the terrorists had stayed the previous night.
By the time I walked into my apartment, I was numb. I grabbed a Coke, turned on the television, and sat on the corner of my bed. The sadness had yet to hit; mostly it was still anxiousness and fear. But I vividly remember the bottomless sense of loneliness that crashed into my chest while I was sitting there. I was six weeks and 2100 miles away from my closest friends.... the people who I would have found comfort with, who would have tried together with me to make sense of it all, who would have reminded me that in the middle of it all, God's love was still there. They were in Austin. And I was sitting alone in a shoebox apartment, less than three miles from the runways where Flight 11 and 175 took off, a block down the street from
where one of the terrorists worked for a cab company, and that very moment the world had shut down. I was lonely and I was scared. And I wanted to go home.
I am one of the fortunate ones who was not directly impacted by the death of a loved one that day. But that day still left its mark on me. For in the moments of loneliness and fear on Queensberry Street, I chose to stay. Somehow, God's peace broke through enough each of the following days to remind me that I was here for a reason. And seven years and a wonderful husband and two incredible boys later, I am more thankful than ever... that I stayed.
It's something that ties us all together. No matter to what degree we were affected by it, I doubt there is one person over the age of 18 who can't tell you where they were that morning when they heard the news. It's indelibly marked for all of us.
I was teaching at Germaine Lawrence at the time. I vividly remember walking the girls to gym class and hearing that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Thinking it was probably a single engine plane that lost control, I used the few minutes of free time that I had to call Jeanna and Paulette back at Riverbend to see what, if anything, they knew of this event. Details were still sketchy at the time, although minute-by-minute a clearer picture was developing. By the time we got back to the dorm, the enormity of it all begin to come into focus. We spent the remainder of the school day trying to focus on classroom tasks, but the girls knew something horrible had happened and needed to begin processing it all. So we gathered them in the TV room and sat down to watch some of the coverage. I spent so much energy trying to help them process something that I had yet to grasp.
As I walked to the bus stop, the world was unusually quiet. No airplanes were in the skies, except for the occasional flyover by the fighter jets that had been scrambled to patrol. My fellow commuters waited quietly on the platforms and then sat in stunned silence on the subway trains. The bus to my neighborhood was detoured around the Westin hotel, because a majority of the bomb units in Boston were parked outside, checking the building since that is where it was discovered that two of the terrorists had stayed the previous night.
By the time I walked into my apartment, I was numb. I grabbed a Coke, turned on the television, and sat on the corner of my bed. The sadness had yet to hit; mostly it was still anxiousness and fear. But I vividly remember the bottomless sense of loneliness that crashed into my chest while I was sitting there. I was six weeks and 2100 miles away from my closest friends.... the people who I would have found comfort with, who would have tried together with me to make sense of it all, who would have reminded me that in the middle of it all, God's love was still there. They were in Austin. And I was sitting alone in a shoebox apartment, less than three miles from the runways where Flight 11 and 175 took off, a block down the street from
where one of the terrorists worked for a cab company, and that very moment the world had shut down. I was lonely and I was scared. And I wanted to go home.I am one of the fortunate ones who was not directly impacted by the death of a loved one that day. But that day still left its mark on me. For in the moments of loneliness and fear on Queensberry Street, I chose to stay. Somehow, God's peace broke through enough each of the following days to remind me that I was here for a reason. And seven years and a wonderful husband and two incredible boys later, I am more thankful than ever... that I stayed.
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