The start of a new school year is always exciting. I was thirteen years old and only just a few days into my 8th grade year at I.S. 34. As I was sitting in my science class, other kids kept being called out and not returning to class. Pretty soon all of the grades were brought into the auditorium as all of the teachers went to an emergency staff meeting. None of us children really had any idea what was going on., kids just kept being called out and not returning. This went on for two hours until it was my lunch period and I went with my friends down to the cafeteria. We were sitting around joking as usual, mostly about how we wish we could leave also, and then my name was called. I stood on a line with other kids as we were ushered out the front door of the school and into a huge mass of screaming and crying parents. It was September 11th, 2001.
I was immediately upset and I wasn’t even sure what was going on. My name was called and my mother raced up to get me, with my younger brother in tow. I remember seeing some of my friends' parents and neighbors who all patted me on the back while giving my mother sympathetic looks. As I sat in the car I asked my mother what happened and she was shocked that I hadn’t found out yet, seeing as how my brother’s fourth grade teacher had told them and let them listen to the news on the radio. As she tried to explain to me about what exactly a “terrorist” was and what they had done in Manhattan all I could hear was the loud roar of the Army bombers overhead.
I sat on the couch in my living room with a pillow on my lap for hours without moving a muscle. I just watched the news and my mother. My father is a Police Sergeant based in Brooklyn. Every time the phone rang my mother pounced on it (this was that fabled time before caller ID) hoping that it was my father, but time after time it was just family members from all over the country calling to make sure that we were okay. It wasn’t until I was a few years older that I realized I might have lost my father that day. It just never occurred to me that he wouldn’t come home. When my mother finally received a phone call from him after many long hours due to there being no cell reception, a lot of the tension in the house was lifted, but the sadness just stayed in place like a fog.
It has been ten years now and I still get upset, the memories now hitting me harder than the actual event did. I was young and had no idea what was going on at the time, but now that I know what happened and have grown up with the war that has resulted from it; the memories just seem to hurt more. I tried not to watch or read any of the coverage of the anniversary. It's basically like bathing open wounds in salt. I accidentally caught some coverage of ribbons being tied around a fence, one for each victim and it seemed like it went of for miles of miles. White ribbons as far as the eye could see and I felt like someone had stabbed a soldering iron through my heart.
Ten years later and not that much progress has been made. A memorial and part of a new building is not something to brag about. The worst part of all of this is the treatment that first responders have received. There was "no room" at the memorial ceremony today for the first responders because of all of the politicians and their security. It took ten years for Congress to pass a bill to give aid to first responders and they only JUST decided that the cancer first responders have been getting could be related to their work that day and in the days after. I can not imagine what it would be like to have your family member come home safe after that day only to slowly be killed by a disease they had contracted from the ash and chemicals in the air while they were rescuing others. There should be a white ribbon tied to that fence for each and every person who has unnecessarily died from a disease they got that day because they are victims as well.
My father refuses to talk about what happened in those few weeks. We can guess but he has never told any of us, and now I don’t think I would really like to know. I know he picked body parts off of roof tops. I know someone whose father still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, even after ten years. I know people walked into the doctor's office where my mother works covered head to toe in ash, missing shoes. People all around me had lost friends and relatives, and I was lucky enough to have made it through with just a scratch when I could have lost a lot more. The thick black smoke rising from the city that I saw driving home from school that day is always on my mind and it will never disappear.
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