Tonight, President Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden is dead, killed in a Navy SEAL operation in Pakistan.
After ten years, the timing of his announcement amazes me. Just this afternoon as I was driving home with my kids from Target, a truck with rather large lettering on its rear window passed me. Its sign read: "Flight 93: Todd Beamer "Let's Roll!" Under which, in smaller lettering, glistened the words, "We will never forget you."
Immediately tears sprang to my eyes and I imagined what Todd Beamer - and all of the members of that doomed flight - had been thinking in those last moments when they knew they were about to sacrifice their lives to protect our nation's capital... or at least, to protect other innocents on the ground.
There are not many things from my 35 years that I remember as though they took place just yesterday.
As for many people though, the recollection of 9/11 stands out starkly for me. We all have a story from that day - how it affected us, who we knew (or knew of) that were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Here is mine.
On September 11, 2001 I was twenty-five years old and finishing up my teaching credential in Southern California. I'd completed my regular coursework and was on to the "student teaching" experience where I worked full time for a credentialed teacher in order to do my hands-on training and receive performance evaluations from both my University faculty advisor and the teacher herself.
The third grade teacher I worked for could not have been more different than me. A stout Latina woman in her early fifties, Maria had been teaching for nearly thirty years and was quite set in her ways. There sprung up an immediate distance between us, or should I say, she took an almost immediate disliking to me... the Ivy League type Caucasian student teacher who yearned to shake things up in her classroom and disagreed with her belief that some kids would simply never make it in school. The tension coming off of her each day when I walked in the room was palpable.
Luckily, with five years of life experience under my belt since the New York City experience, I kept my head down and my mouth shut - worked hard, showed up early, dressed conservatively, and vowed to myself that I would do whatever it took to get a good reference from her.
On the Friday before September 11th, we had experienced a lockdown on campus. An armed man escaping after robbing a local convenience store had taken refuge on our elementary school campus, hiding in one of the bathrooms. Our school was surrounded by SWAT teams and we were informed by the school bell system to lock our doors, close our blinds and take refuge on the floor at the back of the classroom making as little noise as possible until we were given the all clear.
I will never forget the look on the vice principal's face as she came to our classroom to make sure it was locked tightly - it was her job to protect the hundreds of students at the school from threats and as such, despite the known presence of an armed criminal with a loaded gun, she walked steadily from classroom to classroom, checking all of the doors to ensure the safety of the children.
That woman had whatever the female equivalent would be of 'balls of steel'. I prayed for her very hard during that hour of lockdown.
Thankfully the man fled our campus before there could be any kind of shoot-out and within a few hours, we were back to teaching as 'normally' as we could, given the excitement of the morning.
I vividly remember the way one boy, Ray*, kept asking Maria if he could go to the bathroom. "No!" she snapped, and then turning to me she confided that we might need to convert the trash can in the corner of the classroom into a porta-potty.
It was quite a learning experience.
After unwinding over the course of Saturday and Sunday I had decompressed and was ready to go back to work. On Monday I felt excited because Tuesday, September 11 was supposed to be one of the days where I led instruction for a hour on my own, and I had planned a great science lesson using eggs. My university supervisor was scheduled to attend.
Since the school started promptly at 7:00am, I awoke at 5:30... dressed, ate a quick breakfast and jumped into my truck. I headed toward the local grocery store to get three cartons of eggs. I must've been listening to a CD that morning because nothing seemed out of the ordinary and I recall that it was an insanely beautiful, sunny "Indian Summer" type of day in our town. "Maybe I'll hit the beach after work this afternoon," I remember thinking.
Bringing my eggs up to the cashier, I greeted her warmly and made small talk. "Looks like we've got great weather today!"
She stared dully at me. "Did you know that we are at war?"
"What?"
Her face softened. "We are at war. We've been attacked. A plane just hit the World Trade Center. They announced it on the radio."
"What?!!"
I had a difficult time processing what she had told me. It was about 6:15am. Rushing back to my truck, I turned on National Public Radio and listened in shock and silence.
Later I would find out that as I sat in that car, listening to the speakers describe what little they knew at that point about events taking place in New York, Todd Beamer and the other passengers of Flight 93 were realizing that their airplane had reversed somewhere over Ohio and was heading in the wrong direction.
I'm not sure at this point why I continued on to work. Maybe it was the "frozen" reaction that many people experience in the wake of trauma. I'm sure I had no idea that California could be affected at all, and my primary concern at that moment was with being there for the students in my classroom... many of whom were surely already at school and expecting me there to take care of them with Maria.
Once I'd arrived at work and encountered Maria though, I felt a little sorry that I'd come. She was wringing her hands in the doorway of the classroom, and said to me right in front of the line of children, "My God, it's Judgment Day. The Apocalypse is here." She began to sing softly. One of the third graders began to cry.
Not long after the first school bells rang, the principal came by to inform us that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. She informed us that there might be several hijacked planes heading for California and that we'd better prepare for the worst, whatever that might be - especially thanks to the military presence in our town.
Maria and I seated the children who resembled small live wires ready to explode. They were passing around stories of what they'd "heard" on the way to school, from parents, grandparents, television and radio. They pressed us with a hundred questions we didn't know how to answer. "Are we going to die?" one little girl asked excitedly. The situation seemed surreal.
Later that day, Laura Bush would ask the nation to protect its youngest members from graphic images of the towers falling - but when Maria and I made the decision to turn on our classroom television to try to get any information about what had happened to the airplanes, we had no idea that a Tower had fallen in New York... that another Tower would fall within minutes.
We watched in horror then - all of us, including our third graders - as the entire massive building crumpled into dust right before us on the screen. We saw specks jumping from the windows as the building was caving in and realized in one moment of gruesome clarity, that we were watching humans jumping out of windows to their deaths.... right before our eyes.
Maria and I turned off the television and sat in stunned silence with the children. The tears in our eyes matched the tears in theirs. "Oh sweet Jesus," Maria prayed out loud, "Protect these sweet little babies from hellfire."
"Dear God," I prayed silently but just as sincerely, "Please protect these children from being scarred for life by this terrible day and their teacher's talk of hellfire and damnation... and God, please also protect my big brother."
Both of my brothers have lived in New York City for decades - but knowing that one of them was working in Utah on September 11th - I worried only for my eldest brother, whose job at the time was in the southern end of Manhattan near Battery Park. I prayed very hard that I would see him again. I also prayed, quickly and selfishly, that I would not be killed in any kind of attack on California before I'd had the chance to find true love and have a family of my own.
At some point the elementary school administration decided to dismiss all non-essential personnel from their posts for the morning, and as a student teacher I was asked to go home. Though reluctant to leave the kids, I was eager to see my parents. "If we are to be attacked here too, I at least want to be with my Mom and Dad," I thought - and barreled over to the house I grew up in to wrap my arms around them.
By then the worst was over. Flight 93 had crashed when its passengers bravely fought to recover the flight from their hijackers and the hijackers decided to force it down where they were. Both Towers had crashed. The Pentagon was on fire. Video footage of New Yorkers, bleeding and covered with ash, running for their lives uptown was playing on every television station. Air traffic had come to a permanent halt around the country.
Watching the footage of the tragedy unfolding I had wept so much I was completely numb.
One of my three brothers lived with his wife (pre-children) just up the street from my parents' house and he came by to check on all of us. "What will we do if we are invaded?" I wondered aloud.
"None of us will ever let that happen," he replied firmly. "We are Americans and we love this country - this state - this city. If *anyone, EVER* tried to invade us by land, you can believe that my friends and I will fight down to the very last man to protect our homes and families." He said this while looking out over the surf break that he loved most in the world, the beach we grew up on.
I felt almost frightened by the look in his eyes - a dangerous, determined look I had never seen there before.
I stayed over that night with my parents, grieving... and then rejoicing when we finally heard from my eldest brother. We felt so blessed that our family had been protected and safe, yet overwhelmed with sorrow for all of the many, many families who had not.
My family is as liberal as they come and my father hated George W. Bush from the get-go - but I remember weeping as he spoke to our country that day, encouraging us to hold onto the beliefs and freedoms that set us apart from so much of the world. On that day, George W. could have been my father or my brother. I loved him just as I loved every American, I wept with he and Laura just as I wept for every single victim of that terrible day. I felt one with our nation, one with humanity.
On September 12, 2011 Le Monde, the major French newspaper, published an article by Jean-Marie Colombani which said,
"In this tragic moment, when words seem so inadequate to express the shock people feel, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as John F. Kennedy declared himself to be a Berliner in 1962 when he visited Berlin. Indeed, just as in the gravest moments of our own history, how can we not feel profound solidarity with those people, that country, the United States, to whom we are so close and to whom we owe our freedom, and therefore our solidarity?"
It seemed that the world felt one with us, as well.
During the coming weeks and years, views on September 11th (and our American reaction to it) began to diverge widely both within our nation and around the globe. Over time and throughout two ensuing wars, my own views took on many different perspectives as well.
Yet I will never forget how for a few days there following our overwhelming tragedy, Americans were so kind to one another. People were courteous when driving. Perfect strangers hugged each other in the supermarket. Former enemies wept together and buried the hatchet. Estranged lovers reunited, and married couples made babies. People took nothing for granted, we drunk in every drop of life - every little drop.
Everyone had a story to share, and EVERYONE whether rich or poor, light skinned or dark skinned, male or female, adult or child - everyone had common ground.
They say when God closes a door, he opens a window. Perhaps when the Twin Towers fell, the window that was opened was one leading directly into the purest part of our hearts.
* * * * *
Osama Bin Laden is apparently dead but I doubt that our war in Afghanistan will suddenly end or that Al Qaeda or the Taliban will hate us any less. One of the lead characters in the 1987 movie, "The Princess Bride" famously says "Never get involved in a land war in Asia!" so I've known since the seventh grade that it isn't smart to fight in that region. I wonder if we'll ever get out of there in my lifetime.
For now, I just want to sign this off today with the deepest, sincerest thanks given to our brave servicemen and women all around the world who amaze me every day with their honor and willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to protect and defend our nation and the values for which it stands.
I have a good high school friend who became a Navy SEAL out of college and I can't help but wonder deep down if he participated in the assassination of Bin Laden. Either way old friend, with all of my heart, thank you for your strength and valor.
Living in a military town, my family is very close to many Marine and Navy families and I have seen first hand how much they must all give up on a daily basis in order to safeguard our nation. Even when these brave men and women don't personally agree with orders handed down by their higher-ups, they do their job with dignity and dedication - though often they have not been compensated adequately (in my opinion) for the tremendous personal and family hardships they face.
Redeployed again and again away from their families without breaks - at times in violation of their original contract agreements - these people experience extreme stress and at times witness graphic atrocities from which most of us would never recover. They also do amazing things like building schools, rescuing hostages, liberating oppressed peoples, setting up water sanitation projects, constructing bridges and most recently giving aid and technical support to earthquake-and-tsunami-devastated Japan. They truly are heroes.
For all of this I can only say, as humbly as possible and with total respect, THANK YOU to our armed forces for your courage and huge hearts. Most of all, as a mother I thank you for following the call of your deepest convictions to make the world a safer place - not only for my three children, but for all children.
*Name changed to protect the privacy of the party in question.
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