September 11

A few days after I wrote this in my journal, I found out the last line was true for a woman in Ohio.

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I remember that day. It was my sophomore year, and I was in gym class. We were in the belly of the school filled with 2,000 students, so we didn't hear the announcement instructing teachers to turn on their televisions. I remember walking down the halls to Algebra thinking it was strangley quiet and still to be changing classes. When I came through the door of my classroom, no one was mingling about like usual. Everyone was in their desk, eyes glued to the TV at the front left corner of the room. My teacher was standing beside her closed textbook on the lecturn with one hand lightly cupping her chin and the other tucked under the crook of her elbow. I stayed along the wall while I made my way to my desk in the back row, instead of walking in front of everyone.

"What's happening?" I asked my friend beside me as I slid my bookbag straps off my shoulders and plopped in my seat. I saw the burning buildings and though we were watching a movie.

"A plane just hit the World Trade Center," my friend told me. "They think it's a terrorist attack."

I don't think we had school the rest of the day. We went to classes, but the TVs stayed on. All afterschool activities were canceled; a lot of parents came early to pick up their kids.

I wonder if our teachers felt like our guardians that day. I wonder if in our youth we truly understood that moment in history - not the "why" or the "how: - but simply that this moment would change us as a generation and a country.

I think we did. Some of us would fight in the war that followed, some of us would become embittered during the ten years of that war...

Some of us found God and wouldn't have otherwise.