Due you remember where you were on 9/11 ten years ago?

I do. I was in the computer lab working as a technology integration teacher at a school in Northern Virginia right near Dulles Airport.

The library aide came to the door of the lab and asked me to come see something that was on television in the library. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted me to see. There weren’t any new videos in the library I needed to preview. There couldn’t be anything I needed to see.

She remained silent as we walked down the hall and then to the left towards the library. Once she made it into the backroom away from the library filled with children, she finally uttered the words that would change the rest of the school year. She said, “ The Twin Towers have been hit in New York by planes.”

That didn’t make sense. I had landed in all three airports near New York and hadn’t gone near the Twin Towers.

“They think it was done unpurpose!” she said.

I watched the footage on the television in the backroom and it just didn’t look real. It looked like it was from a movie.

After watching the news for a few minutes, I made my way back to the computer lab. It was empty of students, but there were teachers waiting to use the phone I had near my desk. Each wanted to check on a spouse. Some has spouses that were working downtown and others had spouses in airports around the country. The lab was filled with panicked tension.

The school quickly went into lockdown as the school system weighed what should be done. Ultimately they decided that the children would be released to parents that came to the school. Each parent would have to show an I.D. before they would be allowed to go home.

Teachers were encouraged to go home as soon was school was over. I think many of us did just that. I know I went straight home.

Aside from phone calls to my parents and siblings to make sure they were okay, I sat glued to the television watching the story unfold that afternoon

My church had prayer vigil that night, but I didn’t go. I felt safe at home and just wanted to stay there. Instead I spent the evening talking with a friend. We talked for hours about all kinds of things. Some things were random like the fact that I had stayed in the hotel at the base of the Twin Towers and they had worked in the Pentagon. Other things were more serious like what we thought would happen next or how much the world had changed in a day. I lived alone and was so grateful to have someone to connect with that night.

Things did change where I lived.

A check in person was hired for each school to watch the main door and sign all visitors in and out for the rest of the year.

For days there was silence in the air. I lived right under the flight landing path for Dulles Airport. I was eerie to have an empty sky.

Things seemed to move slower as people tried to figure out how to live life in this new world.

This post is linked to Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop and A Dollap of My Life’s Remember 911.