3 years ago today

It started out like any other Tuesday morning, woke up at 6:30 am, showered, shaved, and ate breakfast, dressed while catching the morning news out the door by 7:30 am. Dropped my wife at work at about 8 am. Got to work at 8:30 printed my work for my Earth Science class. 8:45 I was prepping for my first period class. 8:55 am the bell rang, students herded in to my class. We start lessons, I think class went on for about 5- 10 minutes and I heard from one of my students coming late into class. A plane crashed into the World Trade Center. My students suddenly roared into talk and panic. I tried to reassure the class that there was probably some pilot error and that we should get back to our lessons. A few minutes later another student came into the room and said another plane crashed, and told us that Mrs. Clark had the TV on the news in the Computer Room.

Like my students, I had a mix of dread and curiosity, while I followed some students to the Computer room and I was shocked by what I saw. The picture of the Twin towers with smoke and papers blotting the blue out of the sky. I told my students to return to the class room, a few did but I did not force the students who did not want to go back to class. I tried to focus my students back to my planned lessons but we did not progress very much. None of us knew what was going on except that 2 buildings got crashed into and they are now burning. I spent the rest of the period trying to allay my students' fears. But during the middle of the period another student came in and said the Pentagon got hit by an airplane. Pretty much after that I tried even harder to keep my students on an even keel and told them to wait and not to be afraid.

10:30 rolled around and all the students crammed into the computer room and saw the footage of the collapse of the Twin towers, and the scene of chaos at the pentagon. My heart stopped and I felt sick. The rest of the day students trickled out of class as parents called their children to come home early. Nothing much got done that day. We spent much time talking about what was happening.

After work that day I went straight to my wife's school and talked to her and asked how her day was. She told me that she was teaching a student the Pledge of Allegiance to a student in ASL during the time the plane crashed into the Pentagon and expressed the same grief difficulty in teaching anything except consoling the grief and fears of students.

I remembered that the sky was the most brilliant hue of orange that evening, with no contrails in sight.

For about a year after that dark day I lit a candle for those who died every night.

I think I feel as many Americans did that day. We were united in our loss. Like many New Yorkers still to this day, I walk around with 2 tower shaped holes in my heart.

I took a minute and closed my eyes and reflect back on that day.