Saturday, September 11, 2010

this day in '01

On September 11th 2001 I woke up for work. Prajna was in Los Angeles with Naomi at Children’s Hospital LA. Naomi was hospitalized for an infection and had recently been not hearing anything very well. There turned out to be fluid in her ears so that day she was getting surgery to have tubes put in her ears. My parents came over to look after the three younger children while I went to work and they told me some planes had flown into the World Trade Center. We turned on the TV and I saw the footage of smoke coming out of one of the towers. To me it didn’t look too bad.
Driving to work I listened to the news on the radio. Just before I got to work one of the reporters live in New York said:
“Oh my God,” and I heard a roar in the background. When I got in to work a TV was on and one tower was gone. The next one fell soon after.
I was teaching at the time at a placement facility for juvenile offenders. They were more subdued that day and delighted when we canceled classes so they could watch the news. I think the most disturbing image that morning was people dancing in the streets of Palestine. Children were cheering into the camera. The boys asked me why the Arabs hated us. I explained about Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and that it was a turf war among other things. The school principal heard me explaining and later had me teaching a current events class.
I drove to Los Angeles the next day to be with Prajna for her birthday. The sky was blatantly empty of planes and it was disturbing. Naomi could hear again and Prajna was showing her six month pregnancy with Jamie.

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