Remembering September 11, 2001

As I was ratting my roots this morning in the bathroom, getting ready for a day of teaching imperative and interrogative sentence types to 5th graders, I couldn't help but stop and think back to this day, September 11th, of 2001. I remember it clearly.

We were only married that April before, and were literally coming up on our 4 month anniversary. We were living in our first house, a charming pink brick one story, which I thought was swell. I finally had my pink Barbie dream house. It had one garage where I pulled my little two door, red Honda civic into. David generously parked on the curb, right beside the weeping willow we planted not but a few weeks after closing day. David was working the graveyard shift from 3:30 in the afternoon until 3:00 in the morning at that time at a manufacturing plant in the neighboring town. As a new wife, I was a sophomore at the University of Arkansas, taking a full load, and caring for my new home with pride and adoration. I didn't mind David being away during the day, but the nights were an adjustment. I spent my time organizing our pots and pans, trying to get the right lids to sit on the right pots for faster cooking, stacking Tupperware by size, and folding our brand new bathroom towels from our gift registry. At 19, I was a young bride, but took on my new responsibilities with a ferocity I can't even explain. It was a life I was ready for and the future was bright.



David, after working at the manufacturing plant that bought our first home, decided it was time for a change, and immediately set his sights on the U.S. Postal Service. This was long before his decision to go to college or pursue engineering.  David, 20 at the time, was hired immediately as a mail carrier, much to our shock and surprise. David has always seemed to be lucky in love when it comes to job opportunities. I equate it to his quiet, sensitive demeanor, matched with a determination that would set wet grass on fire. He informed me one night over dinner in our yellow kitchen that the Post Office would be sending him to Little Rock on September 10th for a training exercise and not to expect him home until the end of that week. Being the wife that I was, I assured him I would manage fine. My 20th birthday loomed ahead on September 18th, and I tried to hide my disappointment that he might not be home to celebrate with me. Being that is was my first birthday as a married woman, I expected festivities of grandeur, complete with a cake breakfast in the morning, and sentiments of love at night. He assured me again he would be home in time to celebrate the day I "graced planet earth", his joking and sarcasm in full swing, as was normal for him. I bit my lip and smiled, fearfully selfish and naive, childish in my need to be recognized. Little did I know my first birthday as "Mrs.McCash" would be filled with a different type of terror and trembling.

He left as planned on the 10th, making the drive from our house in Northwest Arkansas to the middle  of the state, and I continued with classes, eating meals at the kitchen table alone, reading ginormous textbooks about educational theory, and dreaming of what type of life the Post Office would bring to two kids who didn't know any better. On the morning of the 11th, I caught the brown bus at the corner of Dickson Street, and held tight to the bar above me as we passed over the railroad tracks that would eventually deliver me to my History of Literature class and Beowulf, which we were reading that day. As the bus lurched to a stop, the radio announcer made a startling announcement that rocked the brown bus to the core. Complete strangers hugged each other's back side, trying to lean in and hear the crackling radio. The towers had come crumbling down. Amidst the exhaust fumes and well-planned day of those of us aboard, a moan escaped the lips of those who understood what some could not. The bus began moving again as the reality of class starting in Arkansas seemed more poignant than the terror a million miles away. Not one of us got off at our stop that morning. We rode around and around the block, unable to tear ourselves away. The reporters bursting into tears, unable to explain what they were seeing made me feel nauseous.  I finally did get off that bus after a few laps around the university- and I headed straight home and to our little T.V. set.

David, in Little Rock, heard the news, too. His classes halted when another instructor ran into their training session, wheeling in a T.V., breathless and troubled. David and I watched that day, unable to communicate due to our lack of cell phones. As a new employee at a government training, David was locked  down and unable to leave the facility. I sat at home and played hooky from school the rest of the next two days, watching with a gross fascination for something that seemed more like imaginative fiction than truth. When David did call, it was from the hotel room, where we couldn't afford to pay the long distance fees. We kept it brief, but were both brave for the other, not sure what lay ahead for our country and too afraid to speak the unimaginable. We didn't know if it was over, if another wave would hit.  So much uncertainty.

When David made it home, we had both changed. We had both grown and had, unfortunately,in some ways, grown cold in the process. Our hearts were hardened with the reality that was now life post 911. It is something you can't explain to those too young to have experienced it as an adult. We had witnessed the terror of a new threat, away from one another, terribly young and afraid, and it had changed us. We no longer took for granted the little pink brick house, or the patch of grass we cultivated with mums and tomatoes. We grew together with a fervor, promising to live life in such a way that those who lost their lives would be proud.  At only four months into our marriage, our eyes had been opened to the world.

Today, we still remember that week and the plans we had for the future. Those plans have been altered and our lives have taken many different twists, but we are proud to be Americans and proud to call this country home. Those who died did not die in vain; they died to give us a hope for tomorrow, for all of our days in houses we love, with gardens we adore, with loved ones we admire, and to celebrate those birthdays that those aboard the planes will never celebrate. Remember this 911 what we are fighting for. We are fighting for freedom.

My birthday is next week. This birthday I pray for peace.