Seven Years Later

The flags flew at half-staff. Otherwise, the day was just another Thursday. Seven years ago, September 11 was just another beautiful fall Tuesday. A friend asked me, “Where was I when we heard?” Actually, I told him, you were standing almost where you’re standing now. My desk was on the other side of the room, we had a TV on a file cabinet in the corner. The phone rang and a friend at home with her new baby said, “Turn on the TV! A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” So we sat in the school office and watched the second plane hit the second tower. An hour later, American Airlines flight 77 hit the Pentagon and first wave of parents hit the front door of the school to take their children home.

We turned off the TV in the office. We depended on internet news to keep us informed of the events in New York City, Washington and then in a small Pennsylvania town. There were urgent conversations with teachers as normalcy turned to anxiety. “What’s happening now?,” we asked each other. Teachers kept the kids occupied but it became more and more difficult to dodge questions from students who watched their classmates leave for home. “Why is everyone leaving?”

For hours we didn’t know where the husband of a staff member was. Turns out he had been in the central courtyard of the Pentagon when the jet broke the outer walls of the building. He was unhurt, his wife sobbed with relief when he finally got a phone call through to her.

Planes stopped flying all over the country. Airports closed. Travelers would eventually rent cars to drive home from their business trips.

Parents picked up their own children and offered to take the children of their neighbors. The overwhelming sense was that people just wanted to hug their families. Some folks were headed home to watch the continuous television coverage. Others had packed the car and were heading out of the DC metro area. “We’re going west,” said one mom, “maybe to Ohio.” I got a call from the church… a service would be held at 7.

By the end of the school day, about half of our 700 students had been checked out early. We closed the office and staggered home to watch the news, to see what we’d been hearing about all day.

By 6:30, I’d seen enough. I headed up to church where I sat with people who had gathered to look at the day’s events through the lens of faith. The priest passed around a microphone and people shared their stories. The flight attendant who had switched shifts and was not on Flight 77. The father whose best friend had been in a World Trade Center office that morning. The mom whose firefighter son was going to be at the Pentagon for days, working the site of one tragedy while grieving the firefighters who died in New York.

We prayed. We sang. We sang America the Beautiful… every verse. But we cried when we sang:

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!

I still cry when we sing that verse.

In the days that followed, the skies stayed quiet except for the military jets patrolling the nation’s capital area. Children missed school because their mothers could not stand with them at the bus stop without being cursed for wearing the hijab. People returned from their westward evacuations. And everywhere, the American flag flew as a symbol of solidarity in the face of attack.

So here we are, seven years later on September 11. My husband was not stranded in New Mexico, I picked him up at the airport where the giant flag flew at half-staff.

We need to remember. We need to be proud Americans who stand for compassion and social justice, not just military power and missions "accomplished." Yes, we need to be aware of safety and security, but the lesson I hope we remember most often is the need for reaching out to each other. Let’s reach out even further as we remember to love each other as God loves all of us.