Thirteen years. It was a beautiful day, the school day had begun well, and last night's meeting with the parent body had gone well. A great start to the year. Stopping off at the business office to say good morning to friends there, the day suddenly shattered and the world has never quite returned to that brilliant optimistic beautiful day.
My questions as to how we would respond to a real emergency were unfortunately answered. The plans we had laid down were quickly adapted to the needs of our school community and children and parents were reunited as parents came to claim their children, a natural tendency to be with family at a time of crisis, at a time when the world had exploded in an unprecedented terror attack of such size and power.
The needs of children and faculty had to be met as well and teachers bore up beautifully under the strain, dealing with their own fears and tears even as they remained calm within the classrooms. They were heroic in their efforts, behavior and actions.
But behind closed doors one could see the terror and fear in the eyes of adults. How could this be? How could we adequately explain this to the kids? How could we explain this to ourselves? I spoke of riding past the WTC at the 1993 bombing when at first it was reported as an electrical explosion. I remember my kids' frantic phone calls to me to get home quickly, to leave Manhattan right away. Luckily, it was a Friday, a day of early dismissal and when the students had all been picked up and driven or walked off, we were able to leave.
What would have happened now if we had paid more attention to that bombing, realized its significance, the bad omen it was? But most of us were unable to see that. Yes, we knew that there were terrorists in the world, had seen some of their prior twisted attacks, but here? In America? Nah. A fluke. We would arrest and punish the perpetrators, mourn the slain, and that would be the end of that.
How little we knew. How faulty our thinking. And now we live in a world where terror is almost a daily event, a phenomenon that makes us tired, that has blunted our feelings and made the awful merely mundane. How many people are absorbed by the story of the 40 Fijians still held by a terrorist group in the Middle East? How many have seen the videos of them, oh, so happy in their captivity? How many realize that Israel saved the remaining soldiers of the UN force and what that means to the use of UN troops in the future? For that matter, how many people even realize that it is September 11 once again and how many people will actually go to one of the several ceremonies of the day in local areas and how many will simply go to Publix, sit by the pool and chat without the thought of the day even hitting them until sometime later today when they go, "Oh my G-d! It's September 11, 9/11!" Think a bit. And then move on.
I guess it is a natural survivor's instinct, to let things go, to let the sharp edges dim, but for me, I will never forget the empty space in the sky, the smell of smoke in the air when we went to Manhattan the following week and added our feelings to the Union Square memorial and watched our oldest grandchild write what his young mind could verbalize. I will never forget the confusion in the eyes of the children that day nor the tears when they returned and found that some of our kids had been affected, hit with true losses, not just of innocence, but of people, family and friends.
Last night we all found out that once again we are involved in a war, this time a war with a terrorist state, a state, a movement, that wants to re-establish the seventh century caliphate and indeed return to the brutality of the times then with a touch of modernity in achieving their nasty goals. We hear that there will be a coalition, that it will be waged from above for Americans but we wonder, oh, do we wonder? How long? How limited? How terrible? And how successful? We think of strange allies and question our own sanity and the plans of the President of the United States and we wonder if our leaders can step up to the plate and truly lead. It has been a long time since we have had a true leader.
As for me, I am frightened, not so much for me, but for the next generation or two. What will their world look like? What will their lives be like? Will war actually hit our shores and our land, our homes, for make no mistake about it, they will be here again. So we must hope. We must pray. We must be vigilant. And we must remember those who died on that awful day, a day which simultaneously displayed the lowest bestial instincts of man and its highest elements of heroism. We must remember our men and women of the services who died in the war that has gone on forever since that day and seems to have ended up nowhere but for a loss of so many good people. Take a moment today, close your eyes, bow your head and say a prayer in memory of the fallen, the slain, and say a prayer for all of us. May we never repeat that day ever again. May we all know peace.
If you type in the following in your address box at the top of the screen, then you will get to a marvelous, emotional website of a real room connected to 9/11. Try it. You might be able to only do a piece at a time as it is quite overwhelming.
www.nysm.nyse.gov/familyroom/pano
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