I don’t often talk about September 11th. I feel like there are so many more people who suffered so much more than I did that by even telling my tale from that dark day, I’m somehow equating my pain with theirs…which would be ridiculous. But, I do have a story from that day and it does bear sharing, if for no other reason than to remind me of how very lucky I am to be a teacher.
In September of 2001, I was teaching at a small, independent school outside of Boston (no, not the one at which I was teaching most recently). It was, I believe, my second full year in the 5th grade, and we had what our fellow teachers euphemistically referred to as “a challenging group” that year. To translate for those of you who are not teachers, this usually means “pain in the ass;” in this case, it meant in particular “huge social issues; precocious, teen-like behavior, particularly among the girls.” But to be honest, I loved that group of kids and had been looking forward to being their teacher (and I believe my co-teachers felt the same way). Yes, they had some social dynamics issues and yes, they could be a handful at times, but for the most part they were a lively, friendly, invested bunch of kids who were every bit as affectionate and humorous as they were, on occasion, mean-spirited and careless.
I am not sure who first told me about the plane hitting the first tower; it was definitely one of my co-teachers, but I can’t recall which one (one of them is probably reading this, so feel free to fill in my blanks, Kristen). I do remember that I was sitting at my desk, and that our students were engaged in some sort of noisy, independent activity that really needed only my occasional admonishment to keep it down for the classes on either side of us. I was probably grading papers or checking email, to be honest. When Sue or Kristen came up from behind me (my back was to the classroom door), and whispered in my ear that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center, I had a moment of absolute certainty that this was not the worse news I’d be getting around this event…not by a long shot. And as the day progressed and we heard about the second plane and the plane hitting the Pentagon and the heroes who brought down the plane in the field in Pennsylvania, that feeling didn’t diminish even a little; with each and every more upsetting piece of news came a gut-wrenching sense of, “There’s more.”
Reaching out via phone and internet to check on all of the many people I knew in and around NYC and DC was a painstaking process but ultimately provided nothing but relief and joy. Anthony, who worked down near the WTC, was fine; Bryan, who worked near the Pentagon, was safe. Even Amy, who should have been on the subway right at the WTC stop when the Towers fell was- as she so often is/was, thank goodness! – late for work and safe. Everyone I knew closely and personally was fine. I breathed a sigh of relief as the day came to a close, pushing aside that feeling that the other shoe simply hadn’t dropped.
As I went to exit the school building, I walked past my friend Marge, the librarian sitting at her usual perch behind the checkout desk. Her eyes were red from crying, not an unfamiliar look for the day. I stopped to offer comfort, assuming she had known someone who had died; I felt so lucky that I hadn’t, the least I could do was be a strong, less-effected shoulder on which to lean. We talked in general terms about the tragedy, and then I said, “I just feel so lucky that everyone I know was okay.” And what followed was perhaps one of the longest silences in my life. “They…weren’t?” I asked. Marge’s eyes filled with tears again, and I racked my brain to come up with whom we both knew and about whom I might have forgotten to inquire. “Cassie’s mother,” replied Marge simply (I am recreating this exchange from a memory clouded with time and pain, so if it seems somewhat stilted, I apologize). I laughed in relief. Cassie was a delightful, somewhat iconoclastic young lady in our class whose parents were on a trip to California; they had left that day, taking separate planes as parents – particularly late-in-life parents of only children- sometimes do. “No, no!” I exclaimed in relief. “They’re both fine- I asked!” Marge just looked at me. “They’re…not?” I said, echoing my previous, tremulous tone of voice. “We’re not supposed to know, or talk about it, but her mother was on the second plane. She’s gone.” And that is really the last thing I remember from that day.
In subsequent hours, I would have lengthy phone conversations with our head of school, both of my co-teachers, my parents and, probably, a dozen other people. I remember none of them. I do remember that I was informed that Marge’s information was, in fact, correct: Cassie’s mother had been killed when the second plane hit the Towers. Cassie’s father’s plane had, like all planes, been grounded and he was trying desperately to find a way home to be with her. The next morning, we met as a faculty before the students got to school and the following edict was issued: we were not to tell Cassie that her mother was dead. The consulting psychologist who’d been brought in to help the students and us deal with the tragedy admonished all to take care of ourselves if we really wanted to be there for our students, and I remember very distinctly his encouragement that we drink water as stress is dehydrating (to this day, when I go to have a glass of water in response to stress, I think of that day).
It took Cassie’s father nearly a week to make it back to Massachusetts from the Midwest, what was easily the longest and worst week of my teaching career. Every time I’d see Cassie happily playing on the playground or with her nose buried in a book or even doing something as mundane as avoiding eating the tuna from the salad bar, I’d think about how dramatically her life was about to change. Nothing would ever be the same for her; there was no way to even cushion her from the pain she was soon going to receive. One of the reasons I so love being a teacher is that I feel nearly every minute of every day that I am doing something to help make better and more interesting the lives of people whom, I hope, will someday go on and make the world a better, more fun, and more positive place. But here I was completely unable to do anything; I knew full well that even after Cassie was aware of what had happened, there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do to make it better. Only time could do that, and even in my usual hubris I recognized I had no ability to speed up that…or Cassie’s healing.
Eventually Michael came home, Cassie was informed, and their family took a few days to circle the wagons and grieve somewhat privately (one of the awful parts of keeping this secret for that week was not being able to react as strongly as I would have otherwise during the nonstop news coverage). When Cassie came back to school, her classmates- viewed before as self-serving troublemakers – rallied around her in a way that belied even our highest expectations. The “mean girls,” who on occasion in the past had mocked Cassie’s more tomboyish ways, wouldn’t leave her alone to the point where I think they rarely even let her go to the girls’ room by herself. Cookies were baked, playdates were arranged, clothing and hair doodlies were loaned back and forth… one of their own had been hurt, and our students in their infinite wisdom and depth of heart recognized that they needed to protect her as best they could after the fact. It was a long rest of the year, and it wasn’t until very near its end that Cassie had the inevitable catharsis necessary for moving on with her life.
But she has. She and her father moved to Florida after that year; his family was there, and it gave her the opportunity to be away from the memories here and be closer to them. She took up golf, and we heard fairly regular updates about her success in both academics and athletics. She’s now a student at Wellesley College, back in Massachusetts… and an occasional visitor to my Facebook (as she and many of her classmates from back then are my FB friends). She retains that goofy sense of humor and irony that would show itself so frequently even in the awful weeks after her mother was killed, and it is nothing short of a blessing that we get to see how well she turned out. It makes that endless week, that long, long year all worthwhile… and then some.
So today, I am going to think of good things. Not of misguided pastors who erroneously think they are acting on the will of G’d in burning the holy books of others; not of those who would fight the erection of a religious structure and in essence betray the memories of all who died because our country continues to defend that right. I am going to think about the fact that I was blessed not to lose anyone close to me that day , that the person I know who did honors her mother’s memory every day, and that even in the face of horrible adversity… even children can show grace and kindness.
