Wake Me Up When September Ends.

The start of a new school year is always exciting. I was thirteen years old and only just a few days into my 8th grade year at I.S. 34. As I was sitting in my science class, other kids kept being called out and not returning to class. Pretty soon all the grades were brought to the auditorium and all of the teachers went to an emergency staff meeting, none of us children really had any idea what was going on. Kids kept being called out and not returning, this went on for two hours until it was my lunch period and I went with my friends down to the cafeteria. We were sitting around joking as usual, mostly about how we wish we could leave also, and then my name was called. I stood on a line with other kids as we were ushered out the front door of the school and into a huge mass of screaming and crying parents. It was September 11th 2001.
I was immediately upset and I wasn’t even sure what was going on. My name was called and my mother raced up to get me, with my younger brother in tow. I remember seeing some of my friends parents and neighbors who all patted me on the back while giving my mother sympathetic looks. As I sat in the car I asked my mother what happened and she was shocked that I hadn’t found out yet, seeing as how my brother’s fourth grade teacher had told them and let them listen to the radio. As she tried to explain to me about what exactly a “terrorist” was and what they had done to Manhattan all I could hear was the loud roar of the Army bombers overhead.
I sat on the couch in my living room, with a pillow on my lap for hours without moving a muscle. I just watched the news and my mother. My father is a Police Sergeant based in Brooklyn. Every time the phone rang my mother pounced on it (this was of course before caller ID) hoping it was my father, but it was just family members from all over the country calling to make sure we were okay. It wasn’t until I was a few years older that I realized I might have lost my father that day. It just never occurred to me that he wouldn’t come home. When my mother finally received a phone call from him after many long hours due to there being no cell reception, a lot of the tension in the house was lifted, but the sadness just stayed in place like a fog.
To this day I still get upset on September 11th, the memories now hitting me harder then the actual event did. My father refuses to talk about what happened in those few weeks. We can guess but he has never told any of us, and now I don’t think I would really like to know. People all around me had lost friends and relatives, and I was lucky enough to have made it through with just a scratch. Yet, the thick black smoke rising from the city that I saw driving home is always in my mind and it will never disappear.