In school this morning we had a moment of silence in honor of the day. And I realized that none of my 11th grade students were alive ye ton 9/11. And it sort of blew my mind. 18 years is a long time. I feel like the person I was on 9/11 was someone else, that 20 year old student at Syracuse University.
Syracuse never felt further away from home than that day when I made panic stricken calls from my Nokia cellphone, my first, to my father, mother and friends I knew lived in NYC. Some classes were cancelled some weren’t. The choir director said she did not feel like singing. I didn’t blame her. I went to my classes just to have something to do, so I wouldn’t have to sit in my dorm and watch the news hour after hour. We were supposed to have a football game the following weekend, but it was postponed. So many of us just didn’t know what to do.
My students have only known the post 9/11 world, where there is heightened security everywhere you go, where you have to get thoroughly scanned before you go on an airplane. Where the the US is at war. Where a gaping hole in the earth was made into a waterfall and another tower now stands. And so many of us are still here too. Here but different.
In some ways, our security was taken away. People were and are scared and paranoid. But it did bring out the best in humanity too. I recently saw the musical Come from Away, which chronicles the story of the town in Newfoundland where planes were diverted when the US airspace was closed following the attack. The tiny town took in thousands of scared people and made them feel at home when they felt displaced. It was really such a massive undertaking and certainly highlighted that while there were people who were going to do the worst, there were also people willing to do their best.
Meditations on Literature and Literacy...Continued 