That post about 9/11. . .

Everybody, it seems, had one on 9/11 and I couldn't manage to wrap my head around what I wanted to say.  I know that 9/11 was this pivotal historical event that changed the face of the United States, or, some might even argue, the world.

But it changed me - truly and deeply.  And not, I guess, in the ways that you might imagine.

The morning of 9/11, I rolled out of bed at my boyfriend's house and got ready to go teach.  He and I were doing well - though if I'm being honest (and hindsight gives me that privilege) we were ignoring a few 800lb gorillas in the room of our relationship. Like everyone, I listened in horror.  I watched Tom Brokaw choke back tears as the towers fell.  Then I crawled into my car, drove past a nuclear plant, and faced a classroom of 23 eighteen-year-olds in what felt, then, like the most agonizingly long 75 minutes of my life.

Because I had nothing for them.  Now, 10 years later, I see that as a watershed moment in my teaching career - standing up in front of 23 students and saying "I don't know" felt like the wrong thing to do that day - but it turns out that not only was it the right thing to do then, it's nearly the right thing for me to do every day.  "I don't know but let's learn more about it" is practically a mantra in my modern classroom.  But that day?  It was hard and it was scary and we watched the vague outlines of smoking rubble through the television fuzz in our classroom and we said very little.

That night, I went back to my boyfriend's house and witnessed something that, to this day, makes me hopeful and happy.  One at a time, our friends - local poets and artists and lovers of poetry and art - they rolled over to my boyfriend's small (and I do mean small!) home with words and song and poetry and a general need to come together and create - to somehow strike a balance for the universe in the face of such dark destruction.  My friend Steve brought his guitar and the lyrics to "This Land is Your Land."  My friend Prudencio brought his djembe.  Eventually there were people making rhythms on tables and pots and pans and notebooks and the backs of guitars, there was clapping, there was a room full of people searching for meaning in the creation of a thing - something - in love, in life, in music, in art.

Since then, when I think of the powerlessness I felt the morning of 9/11, I always reflect on that evening on our response - this impromptu gathering of good people forced by the universe to come together and make something good.  Together.  And while I am not grateful for the events of 9/11 and several decisions our nation made afterward, I will always remember with fondness this circle of friends who coped through creation.