11 September 2011 Ten Years Later

Ten years ago today I was living in Charlottesville, had recently finished my PhD, and was teaching at the University as a lecturer. (Drowning is more like it.) I had an early 8AM class that got out at 9:15. Someone in the hallway outside my office was talking about a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers. I didn’t believe it at first. I believed it later. And by my 11AM class my students and I were pretty freaked out, all of us wondering if our family and friends in NYC and Washington DC were OK. My brother and sister-in-law both worked in lower Manhattan at the time. I couldn’t get through to my brother. We didn’t speak a lot of French in my classes that day.

10 years later, back in the same town, things felt pretty calm. Sam and I went to watch AC play the first match with his new soccer team. I talked with the wife of one of his teammates. Sam kicked the ball around with a couple of boys. That was it. Calm is nice.

My heart goes out to all the people who lost somebody 10 years ago today, for whom 9/11 can never, ever be an ordinary day.