On a quiet Tuesday

I sat in the passenger seat of our van on a quiet, sunny Tuesday afternoon. Tuesdays were lesson days and I, as a homeschooler, was studying privately with professors at a local college. My brothers were in the backseat, ready for me to be dropped off so they could go to the library with Mom and use their Arbys coupons for roast beef sandwiches. (5 for $5!) It was already lunchtime, so I would be lucky if they saved one for me.

We drove up the familiar winding road, past the academic buildings on campus as Mom slowed at the music building. I opened my door and hadn’t even fully stepped out before my flute teacher came hurrying outside.

“What are you doing here??” she said.

Mom replied, “Well…it’s Tuesday. Is the college on a break I didn’t know about?”

I’ll never forget her deadly serious, quiet response: “No, I mean what are you doing here? Don’t you know? I can’t believe you haven’t heard. America is under attack.”

In retrospect, it had been an extraordinarily quiet Tuesday morning. My mom often had her little black and white, kitchen counter TV tuned into the Today Show or an early morning talk show. And we almost always had talk radio on in the car on the way to the college. I don’t know why those things didn’t occur on the morning of September 11, 2001, but Dr. Linda Kirkpatrick, in addition to being an influential teacher, will forever be burned onto my memory for being the one on that day.

“Haven’t you heard from your husband? The Pentagon was attacked and all of the local schools are closing. He should be on his way home now. You need to go home and be together as a family.”

Of course he was. With my father working in northern Maryland, he was teaching kids whose parents worked for the government and for Dulles and BWI. All of the sudden, whatever hazy ideas I had was formulating about my country being attacked sharpened—this was impacting my father. This was real.

After a hasty farewell and exit, my mom turned on the radio. I tell Roy library fines were practically a sin growing up, and I have no greater evidence than the fact that we then drove, on 9/11, to the library to drop books off before going home. The radio newscasters filled us in on the horrors of the morning.

I remember sitting in the car as Mom took the books inside. As the horrible details emerged--likely thousands of lives lost, enormous buildings destroyed, and not even knowing if the attacks were over--I crouched down on the floor in front of my passenger seat.

“What’s wrong?” one of my younger brothers asked.

“There’s going to be a war,” was all I could manage to say. I didn’t know everything, I didn’t know much of anything, but I knew this was significant in a way I hadn’t experienced.

And so it was. There was a prayer vigil that night at church, another first. There were thousands of additional flags that were hung in windows and on poles in my town. I don’t remember a whole lot of the aftermath, but my journal entries indicate a sense of wide-eyed, taking it all in-ness. I was 16 years old.