Where were you?

 

September 11

“Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends”

On September 11^th, 2001, the world changed. Average Americans were stopped in their tracks by a catastrophe that sent waves of pain and terror across the nation. The moment we found out that the towers had fallen was burned into our mind, a snapshot from a Polaroid that we each step into when we think about that day. In the background of my memories, I hear an Alan Jackson song eternally asking us all “where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?”

My mom and dad were making the twenty-minute drive into town to do some grocery shopping when they heard the radio announcer telling them the northern tower was hit. Half-way to town, they decided the groceries could wait. They turned the car around immediately to come back home to watch the news. My brother and his girlfriend skipped school that day to celebrate her birthday. She turned 18 on September 11^th, 2001. Welcome to the real world.

                On September 11^th, 2001, I was in my third-grader’s state of blissful ignorance for most of the morning. Our class and two others were crammed into the tiny library of our tiny school to learn about one-room schoolhouse etiquette for an upcoming fieldtrip. I was, as I often am for any event, excited but nervous. Little did I know that in the following confusion and fear, I would not go on fieldtrips any time soon.

                Given that twenty years have passed, the in-betweens of certain moments have grown fuzzy while others, my snapshots of the past, stick out in my mind as if I could step into and relive them at any moment. The first is in the school library, filled with students and staff. I am towards the back of the crowded room, near the teachers and the door. My teacher steps out and comes back, whispering furiously to the other teachers who shift uncomfortably. She leaves again. I am staring back at them and then I turn around because they have noticed me. One teacher tells me to pay attention to the speaker, but I just cannot. I am more interested in what is going on behind me.

I would later learn that what was happening was much more serious than the presentation and much more serious than I could have imagined as an eight-year-old. When my teacher first returned, whispering to the others, was about the time that the first tower of the World Trade Center fell. At this point, the school did not know what to do. When the world feels like it is ending, do you keep all those around you near and try to keep them safe, or do you send them off in their busses, praying that they will arrive home safely?

Around the time that the second tower fell, our lecture ended, though whether it was the actual end or the whole thing was cut off due to events I do not remember. I imagine a moment in which my teacher approaches the speaker, like an advisor approaching the president as he reads to a group of children, delicately presenting the information at hand.

The next memory is of being ushered from the library and told to get our things from our lockers before going back to class. I understood we were going home. I did not understand why. We had not even had lunch yet and this was no half day, so why? I was worried that no one would be home but was reassured that the parents were being notified. In a time before cell phones were as common as they are today, I was still worried that my parents would miss the call.

We loaded ourselves into the busses. My stop was the first, only a few minutes down the street. This short bus ride, apparently, did not give the school enough time to notify my parents that I would be coming home. I climbed down the steps of the bus, looked around our neighborhood bus stop and saw no sign of my family. My mom was not standing there patiently waiting as she usually. My dad was not sitting in his truck with ZZ Top blasting from the radio. There was no one.

This was a big deal for me. My overprotective family would not let me play out of view of the kitchen window and the bus stop was on the opposite side of the block from our house. The walk would not be long, and it was one I made many, many times – with my family. I waited for the bus to pull away just in case my mom was on the other side of the street, blocked by the yellow monstrosity. When the bus was gone, still I saw no one.

I was so afraid that no on would be home to let me in – I was only 8 after all, with no house key yet (though that came soon after “just to be safe,” as my dad said). When I got home, the big door was open, a relief to me as it meant someone was home. I step into another snapshot. It is our old house, the one that I do not yet know that we will move out of in a year. My mother is sitting on the very edge of the couch, as close as she can be without falling off. My brother sits in the big rocker and his future wife sits on the arm. All three are watching the TV intently. It is only after I get halfway into the living room that I am noticed by my brother.

“Abby!”

“What’s going on?”

“Oh my god, Abby Lynn!” My mother jumps off the couch and rushes to me, hugging me, and asking my what in the world I am doing home at this hour.

“They said they were going to call.”

Turns out the school did call; I was just far enough down the list that when they called, I was already on a bus that was pulling into our neighborhood. As I made my walk home, my dad had sped up the other side of the block to get to the bus stop. Much to his surprise, I was not there. He drove once around the neighborhood then hurried home to find our whole family huddled in the living room around the TV like a shrine.

We spent the next decade like that. While families tried to find or reclaim their loved ones and the president declared war, our little family worshipped the news. These attacks sparked a fear and a patriotism in my mother like nothing I have ever seen. We were right here in Michigan. We did not have family in or near the towers. But this travesty shook my mother. Her beadwork and crochet that she sold at our yard sales were nothing but red, white, and blue for years. Most of my own unused beads from my childhood still reflect this obsession. My mother began to collect ephemera about the attacks – magazines and news clippings about it all.

As a child I wanted to know everything. What was going on? Why was everyone so sad? I was eight and the whole thing was beyond me. I was struck by the seriousness and the sadness. I knew it was bad, but why. As an adult, one of billions of people facing a never-ending pandemic that is defining our generation, I long for the ignorance. The not-knowing and just doing what you are told.

This devastating event sent shockwaves through our country. We may not all experience the same loss that others had, but this event brought our country together. We were only in Michigan, but we still felt the impact. For those who were most impacted, those who lost their lives or their loved ones, that September will never end.