Tomorrow will mark the beginning of my 27th year as a teacher. Of course, it will also mark the anniversary of the end of the world as we knew it. Ten years ago, I stepped off a LIRR train and went to the KMART in Penn Station to buy school supplies for my new class. The loot was too heavy to carry onto the subway, so I hailed a cab and headed north while two planes headed for the towers. A few moments after I arrived at school, while unpacking my purchases, a co-worker ran into my classroom and asked me to turn on my television. This was not possible. It had no antennae and my tv was only occasionally used to view videos. My colleague was already sure terrorists were responsible for the news he had heard on the way to work that morning... that one plane had crashed into the WTC. I turned on the radio, but as students arrived, I had to turn that off.
There was a meeting scheduled for the faculty that morning. I remember NOTHING of that. As we left to go back to our rooms, where soon students would return from breakfast , we passed the model apartment, which was packed with people standing around a television that apparently had cable. Within minutes of arriving there, the first tower fell. A long time close friend spontaneously turned around to me and crying, we embraced. I remember asking the stupidest question of my life into her ear: "Did they get everyone out?" The mind simply cannot process such horror. You hope beyond hope. Our time was up, tho, in more ways than one. We all had to get back to our classes.
In an effort to keep everyone calm, we were essentially in a news black-out for hours at a time, unlike the rest of the world. I do remember turning the radio on again when students left for lunch and hearing about the Pentagon and the crash in PA. I distinctly remember turning it off when the students were about to return, and as I did, I thought that I would not be able to get home that evening because I was so certain that bridges around Manhattan would be the next targets and by the time the kids got on the buses, they would be gone.
Inexplicably, they weren't, although they were closed. At around 3 am the next day, my husband was able to get over one to come get me. Traversing the bridge home, I looked towards the empty skyline that my eyes have lingered on for nearly a decade now. Absence had become something you can see.
That early morning, the only thing visible was the huge plume of smoke. For weeks, whenever I was on a subway platform (outdoors in the Bronx), you could taste and smell it. Sometimes, even halfway out to Montauk, you could smell it as well. Walking through Penn Station every morning for months, you could see the families heading toward the Port Authority help offices and the growing Wall of the Missing. Also everyday, both to & from work, there were the firemen and recovery workers passed out from exhaustion on the floor waiting for their trains home. I remember walking through one morning that first week and seeing all the police and firemen... looking down at the floor, I recall the lazy observation that their shoes were covered in ash and then the split second horrifying realization and distinct thought "they never will find anyone---they are there, on their shoes!"
Every morning for months it was the same... passing the office of the family help center and the still growing wall... now a depository for recollection and totem. On the 2 train towards work, if I was not reading the biographies in the Times, someone was. Everyday I wept uncontrollably during that ride. The overwhelming sorrow was so palpable and so much.
I knew people who walked home covered in that ash. I met survivors. I met mourners. I cannot look at the skyline from my daily bridge traverse without seeing what is forever gone. And forgetting has never been an option.
Photo & Text copyright (c) 2010/2011 C.M. Carroll
There was a meeting scheduled for the faculty that morning. I remember NOTHING of that. As we left to go back to our rooms, where soon students would return from breakfast , we passed the model apartment, which was packed with people standing around a television that apparently had cable. Within minutes of arriving there, the first tower fell. A long time close friend spontaneously turned around to me and crying, we embraced. I remember asking the stupidest question of my life into her ear: "Did they get everyone out?" The mind simply cannot process such horror. You hope beyond hope. Our time was up, tho, in more ways than one. We all had to get back to our classes.
In an effort to keep everyone calm, we were essentially in a news black-out for hours at a time, unlike the rest of the world. I do remember turning the radio on again when students left for lunch and hearing about the Pentagon and the crash in PA. I distinctly remember turning it off when the students were about to return, and as I did, I thought that I would not be able to get home that evening because I was so certain that bridges around Manhattan would be the next targets and by the time the kids got on the buses, they would be gone.
Inexplicably, they weren't, although they were closed. At around 3 am the next day, my husband was able to get over one to come get me. Traversing the bridge home, I looked towards the empty skyline that my eyes have lingered on for nearly a decade now. Absence had become something you can see.
That early morning, the only thing visible was the huge plume of smoke. For weeks, whenever I was on a subway platform (outdoors in the Bronx), you could taste and smell it. Sometimes, even halfway out to Montauk, you could smell it as well. Walking through Penn Station every morning for months, you could see the families heading toward the Port Authority help offices and the growing Wall of the Missing. Also everyday, both to & from work, there were the firemen and recovery workers passed out from exhaustion on the floor waiting for their trains home. I remember walking through one morning that first week and seeing all the police and firemen... looking down at the floor, I recall the lazy observation that their shoes were covered in ash and then the split second horrifying realization and distinct thought "they never will find anyone---they are there, on their shoes!"
Every morning for months it was the same... passing the office of the family help center and the still growing wall... now a depository for recollection and totem. On the 2 train towards work, if I was not reading the biographies in the Times, someone was. Everyday I wept uncontrollably during that ride. The overwhelming sorrow was so palpable and so much.
I knew people who walked home covered in that ash. I met survivors. I met mourners. I cannot look at the skyline from my daily bridge traverse without seeing what is forever gone. And forgetting has never been an option.
Photo & Text copyright (c) 2010/2011 C.M. Carroll
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