Remembering September 11

Like many Americans today, I reflected on 7 years ago. I was wearing a red maternity dress. One of the only 2 maternity dresses I owned. Why do I remember what I was wearing? Not that it was anything special. It was picture day. The way everyone at CHS looked that day is preserved forever in the high school yearbook. Life had changed dramatically by the time all 600 students were photographed. I was in front of a sophomore world history class. I had just handed out study guides for the test we were getting ready to have. All of the sudden, the secretary came over the intercom and said "Teachers you might want to turn your tvs on. There is some major breaking news."...i turned my tv on but the only "news" channel my classroom got was Headline News (which, for the record, barely qualifies as news). At this point, only the first tower had been hit. No one realized the true depth of what was happening. I remember going up and muting the TV and telling the kids to get back to work because Headline News had moved from the plane crashing into the towers to what was supposed to be the major news story of the day...michael jordan coming out of retirement or going into retirement or playing another sport, i don't remember...something about michael jordan. I went back to my computer to work when the teacher across the hall knocked on my door. she told me i might want to turn the TV up because another tower had been hit. by the time i got it back up, all we could see was smoke billowing from the towers. throughout the day we sat with the TVs on watching as our lives changed before our eyes. we heard about planes being grounded the world over. experiencing this whole event through the eyes of teenagers made me realize how lucky we really were. Kids who never gave a thought to anything i had to say about government or world history were coming up to me and talking about how almost unimaginable it was that there were absolutely no planes flying in the United States right then. And I will never forget one freshman girl who came up to me in the hallway between classes and just said "why? i don't understand why anyone would want to do this to us. why do they hate America?" I was the social studies teacher. I was the one who taught them all about other countries and government. They expected me to be able to explain it. and how could i explain something that no American could even begin to understand? I remember when I got home that day, I wanted to see my mom. Here is was, married, a teacher, and 8 months pregnant, and all I wanted was to see my mom. I went to bed that night with the TV muted and the covers pulled up over my head and curled into a ball (as much as a beached whale can curl into a ball anyway). I knew no one in Pennsylvania, the Pentagon, or New York but i wanted it so bad to be a nightmare and to wake up and not have to worry about my baby's future in the United States. Thank a soldier and thank God that we are lucky enough to live in this great country. God Bless America.
Just for the record, my pictures from that day were destroyed...the only one that i think probably exists is in the yearbook from that year...and at least that one isn't in color!