Epilogue

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Thank you to those of you who read my pieces about my experience with my students as well as the heroes from that day. After finishing the final piece, it became clear that I had left out so much. It also became clear that in order to include every detail, I would be writing this for the next year. I can’t do that, but I did want to quickly include some thoughts that kept me up last night.

Airplanes

The drive home from school that day, was one of the saddest and most confusing of my life. Accentuating the somberness was the silence. Utter silence. Not many cars had music playing. We were all tuned into the news in hopes of gleaning any information that would help us to wrap our heads around what had happened. That never came. Perhaps it never will. But one detail from that drive home and the several quiet days after, will always be etched into my brain: The lack of airplanes in the sky.

Immediately after the attacks, and for several days following, all air traffic was suspended. If you live near a major city like Chicago, you never notice just how many airplanes fly overhead each minute… until there are none. This strange emptiness just added to the dreadful feeling that things were not right. Even if you tried to pretend and go on with your regular daily routine, the second you stepped outside, you were reminded by the absence of airplanes.

From How Matters

Heroes

I highlighted a few groups of heroes in a previous piece, but I failed to mention more of the everyday heroes. In a way, I think all Americans showed their mettle in the days following 9/11. Like everyone else, on September 12, I woke up afraid. One of my greatest fears was that I would wake up to find reports of Americans lashing out against innocent people because of the color of their skin, the language they spoke, or the God they worshipped. I was bracing myself for large scale citizen on citizen violence. But it didn’t happen. There were scattered incidents of scared, confused people lashing out. Even one such incident was too many… but considering the feelings of fear, outrage and confusion, I was proud that the vast majority my fellow citizens sought to unite together rather than tear apart.

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Flags

So many flags. Instead of lashing out and displaying hateful messages, people decided to proudly display their American flags. The attacks were meant to cripple us and tear us apart. These flags symbolized our defiance to those aims. I realize these were only symbols, but symbols matter. People felt a common bond with their neighbor. They looked at them and felt a tiny bit of comfort.

There was one particular flag I will never forget. The next morning, like the vast majority of Americans, I struggled to muster the strength to get through my mundane regular routine. How could I just get up and go to work? Shouldn’t I be doing something? But honestly, for many of us, carrying on and showing we were not broken was the best we could do. As I drove to work the next morning, the eerie silence enveloped me once more. Still no planes. The sun started to rise as I drove down the Kennedy Expressway on my way to work. I was still trying to comprehend what had happened. I was trying to figure out what to do next. As I looked at the drivers in the other cars, it seemed like they were doing the same.

There are dozens of overpasses under which I would routinely drive on my way to work. With each one, I knew I was getting closer to my school… and I was in no state to meet the kids. Then I saw it. An American Flag. No. The American Flag. During the night, while everyone else tried to sleep the best they could, someone (or most likely a team of people) had hung the largest American Flag I have ever seen from the Madison Street overpass. I, and thousands of other drivers, saw that flag. It is true that is was only a symbol. But symbols matter. It was a symbol that we would stay united. We would not be crushed. We would carry on. It was a symbol that helped give me the strength to meet my students that day.

I’ll never know who hung that flag… but I owe them a debt of gratitude I can never repay.

Thank You

Motivation

Thank you to everyone who read and commented on these stories. Steemit is the first social media community I have ever been a part of, so this was my first opportunity to share my perspective with a group of people who are not my students. Selfishly, it was a cathartic process that helped me to process the emotions I feel every September. But honestly, I wanted to share this with you for the same reason I want to share it with my students. I don’t want to teach them history. I want them to feel history. Most of the Steemit community members are much younger than I. The average age on here is 30. That means many users were as young as or younger than my students in 2001. I can’t imagine what it was like to witness these events through the eyes of a teenager. And those teenagers can’t imagine what it was like to see things through the eyes of an adult. I hope these pieces had some value for those of you who were kind enough to take the time to read them.

Promise

My next several pieces are going to be all “puppy dogs, rainbows, and ice cream.” No more heavy topics for a while. In fact I think my next one will be all about toys.
If you missed any of the series and you would like to read them, you can find them here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.