Remember

Today is not September 11, 2012 (obviously, huh). But I have some things to say about remembering and could not get my thoughts together in time on Tuesday (when it WAS September 11, 2012).

Eleven years ago.

I officially retired from teaching after nearly 30 years on July 1, 2001. I had imagined for years (particularly the last ten of them) what it would feel like to wake up on THAT day in August when teacher inservice began and know I did not have to attend. Near the end of every summer vacation, I'd think of the old joke where it sounds like the mother is speaking to her 'reluctant learner' child. She says something like, "YES, you have to get up now, and YES you have to get dressed, and YES, you have to go to school." Dramatic pause. "You're the teacher!"

So FINALLY the time had come. I thought.

I taught kindergarten and first grade all those years, but in the beginning I earned an art education degree. It only took a semester of student teaching and one year in a junior high art classroom to make me realize that though I loved DOING art, I didn't necessarily like to TEACH it. So I added elementary education, in particular kindergarten certification, to my credentials ... and thank the Good Lord I did.

In the spring of 2001, I filled out the paperwork to retire, but my principal immediately persuaded me to take a semester long substitute job the following fall for our elementary art teacher who became ill just before school let out for the summer. So, I like to say that I began my years in the classroom teaching art, and I ended my years in the classroom teaching art, albeit a very different and more pleasureable experience the second time around. The only downside was that I had to put off for one more year finding out what it felt like on Teacher Inservice Day when you no longer have to attend (Oh YEAH, it is GREAT!).

So. Flashback to eleven years ago.

I was standing in the door of the art room, having just dismissed twenty something students to return to their regular teacher (one of the perks of being a so-called 'special' teacher where the students come to you is that you do have five minutes to breathe between those classes!). Another teacher came down the hall leading her children in a line behind her; as she passed me, she whispered, "Turn on your TV. A plane crashed into a tower of the World Trade Center." That's all she had time to say, and of course, I thought she meant it had been an accident.

I turned on the TV in time to see the second plane crash into the tower and very quickly learned that it was no accident. That day - the sights, the sounds, the emotions - and the days that followed, are indelibly inked in my brain.

A particular attribute of the modern media age is that we "get to see" and often, we see it live.  I saw a man walk on the moon and heard the "one giant leap for mankind" speech when it happened. I saw John John in his sweet little powder blue suit salute his dead president father as the flag covered caisson rolled down Pennsylvannia Avenue (the sound of the horses hooves on pavement takes me back to that day). I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. I watched when the space shuttle with a teacher on board blew up in front of her family and her third grade class (and was so thankful we were out of school because of snow, so I didn't have to cope with my first graders when I could barely cope myself). And I've watched countless other things happen live via the screen of my television (including OJ's white bronco leading a cadre of state troopers down the interstate!). My generation relates and remembers where we were when because of TV. Recently, I added a slightly different perspective. A friend told me (as we remembered 9-1-1) that her mother cried when she heard about the World Trade Center; she said it was just like hearing the news about Pearl Harbor. Nine-eleven made her remember that day of horror.

We have TV, but our parents' generation had the radio. The news of the tragedies of their generation came over the radio waves as they sat huddled around it, listening to a disembodied voice relating something terrible. My dad had just returned six days earlier from his required year of Army training and service when they heard about Pearl Harbor. He and my grandparents were sitting around their Sunday noon meal after church. He rejoined his unit shortly afterward and spent the next three years (without leave) in the Pacific Theatre. When he told me that, I was a senior in high school, but he remembered exactly what he'd been doing and how he felt. It was the same for my mother. She also can describe sthe moment at the "picture show" that Sunday afternoon when she heard about the bombing (there were also newsreels shown in those days.)

Each year, Nine Eleven also makes me think of my son, who is a professional fireman. When everyone else rushes away from fire, firemen run toward it. It is a profession that I respect and honor and admire. I give thanks daily for the men and women, my son among them, who have that kind of courage and bravery and sacrifice bred deep in their hearts.

And so on this September 11, 2012, I remembered. I thought of the many things that changed after that day; the stricter laws regarding airports and the Department of Homeland Security, just to mention two. I thought of the many, many acts of bravery from policemen and firemen and office workers and heroic men on airplanes and at the Pentagon. I thought of the families who will never forget that day for a much more personal reason than I. They lost a family member, or perhaps a career and a lifestyle they'll never regain. Or they may now live with a loved one who has a terminal or debilitating disease because of rescue or clean-up efforts in and around Ground Zero.

For all of us in America, September Eleven changed us and our way of thinking. It made us stronger, more patriotic, more compassionate or bitter, but in some indisputable way, it stamped each of us, and we are different.

As Churchhill once said about Pearl Harbor, this day - September 11, 2001 - was "a date which will live in infamy."