It's so common to ask, "Where were you when it happened?" as an historical event comes up in discussion. We do have our mental images of time and place.
My impressions during the 9/11 attacks of a decade past, however, are especially vivid. I was at the Madison School Forest with a couple of colleagues and 45 fourth graders.
As we left school first thing that morning I glanced into another classroom where the TV was on. For whatever reason, the whole class was watching a plane repeatedly smack into a skyscraper. I thought, “Man, that’s pretty odd and pretty awful.” We finished boarding and headed out to the Forest.
After our wonderful naturalist hikes in the morning, I called back to school to find out exactly what had happened with that plane. What I got was “Pentagon” and “field in Pennsylvania” and “World Trade Center.” Unbelievable! Terrorists?? Our country?
We were in a media sheltered environment. No radio, no TV. It was a beautiful day in a quiet, lush, green, vibrant atmosphere. Gleeful kids drowned out natural bird calls at times, but this place seemed as far as you could get from NYC. We were a part of a yin and yang of the American pulse that day.
The surreal component of all this caught up to me a number of times during the afternoon. We continued on with our outdoor activities. I felt somewhat protective of the children’s day as their parents and the rest of the country were witnessing the horrible images from out east. It often appeared that our kids were moving in slow motion, much as the ad-nauseam slo-mo shots of the crash would abuse us in the days to come. But they were smiling and getting dirty. They were content. I had a couple of teary moments in this unsettled twilight-zone state.
Before boarding the returning bus we sat everyone down and explained the somber facts as we knew them. They were to talk to their parents when they got home, and we’d continue relevant discussion in the morning.
I was relieved that this particular group of ten-year-olds didn’t have to spend their day in class with news bulletins and anxious adults. I was glad they could let loose and take in the natural classroom. There was enough time in the days to come to process the tragedy. This tragedy about adults who, frankly, could not get along.
