10 Years Ago

Where were you?
I was preparing to start my day of teaching English.  I had just sat down at the teachers' table in the lunch room for morning announcements.  Another teacher told us a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.  As most everyone else in the country, we assumed it was a small plane.  An accident.  A few fatalities and injuries.  I wasn't able to get onto the Internet news sites at all that day, and even though I heard bits and pieces of news throughout the day, I didn't understand the full magnitude of the tragedy until I got home from school that day.  I'm not sure I still understand the full magnitude of what happened on 9/11/01.
I remember my feeling of blissfully ignorant security was suddenly taken away.  Wars happened across the world.  Bombings happened occasionally, but no one attacked our country on that scale.  Until that day.  I had never heard of Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaida before.  I'm sure they had been in the news, but I had never paid attention.
I remember a feeling of loss on several levels--the people lost in the towers, the people lost on the planes, those lost in the Pentagon, the families who mourned them, and, maybe the most shallow of the losses, the loss of those majestic towers my friends and I had just admired anchoring the New York City skyline two years before. 
I was surprised in the coming weeks as I assigned a writing assignment in one of my classes.  The topic of the essay was, "What I See in My World Today."  The essays were overwhelmingly full of hope, optimism, and faith in the goodness of mankind.  Al Qaida may have taken several things away from us that day, but it did not take away the optimistic spirit of my students. 
Ten years later, it is clear that it didn't take away the optimistic spirit of this country either.
We will always remember as we continue to prevail.
God Bless Us.