Ryan's 9/11 Haiku from 3rd Grade

September 11, 2001 started out as a beautiful day here in Lansing, Michigan. Chris went to work, and I loaded the boys up in the car to take them to our regular Tuesday MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meeting, which started at 9:00 am at a church in East Lansing.  I had the radio on, and at 8:45 I had just exited the highway and was turning onto the road towards the church when I heard the song suddenly stop and Dan Rather say he had breaking news. It was 8:46 am and the first plane had just hit the World Trade Center.

I remember thinking those poor people in that plane, I hope they didn’t realize what was happening, it must have been some kind of horrific plane malfunction or pilot error or something. We got to the meeting.  A few people were saying they had heard the story on the radio too, about a plane in New York, but we all just thought it was a terrible accident. No one had any idea what was really going on, so we just had our meeting as usual.

Driving home around 11:45 am was when I realized how bad it really was. I got the boys home, got them some lunch, and turned on CNN.  And then, like the rest of the world, I sat there all day watching. The boys were 5 and 3 in 2001, and perfectly happy entertaining each other in their playroom, running out once in a while to hug me or show me something they had made with their Legos, while I just kept sitting there.

Even though it was the same story over and over, the same footage, I watched until Chris got home, we made dinner, got the boys in bed, and kept watching.  To me it felt like, if I can’t be there helping, the least I can do is watch on TV and send out the strongest silent prayers I had in me. I’m not a religious person but I prayed anyway, asking the Universe or whomever was out there to please, help the people of New York get through this.

If I could have, I would have driven from Michigan to New York to help in the days afterwards. The TV stayed tuned to Ground Zero, showing the workers digging, and I would have gone and passed out water bottles or done anything that was needed. I hated how helpless I felt.  I worked part-time at Target then, and we got a box of those little flag pins, remember how everyone was wearing those for about a month after?  I wore my pin every day, not just at Target, I pinned it every morning to whatever shirt I was wearing.

But one evening while I was outside during my break having a smoke, I heard a roar and looked up and saw an airplane flying above my head, and my heart jumped inside my chest.  And at that moment I hated those goddamn terrorists for making me afraid.  I hated them for making me worry just for a minute that the plane was going to suddenly dive and fly right into Target, which is ridiculous, but just for that second, the fear was there.

I was so proud though, of how people got so much nicer to each other when we all realized how easily it could have been anyone’s city that day. On a message board I chatted on back then, people signed off by telling each other to be safe.  Strangers talked to each other in the checkout line at Target about it. People were even nicer when driving, letting other cars merge, waving to let people cut through lines at lights, I saw it happen every day for weeks.

I think we all realized how much we took our safety, our country, our need to rely on each other, for granted that day.  I think we realized that there could be a day when it was our city, when we would need each other, and we’d better stop living inside our own heads and acknowledge that we are part of a community.

Ten years later, it still hurts to think about how our country was violated that day.  It hurts my heart thinking of the families who lost someone they loved.  I’ll send more silent prayers to the Universe or whomever is out there that nothing like this ever happens to our country ever again.  To all my readers, be safe.