// Remembering that Joel had pinkeye. Sending him to the nurse. Joel storming back: “I just heard that one of the towers collapsed, and another plane hit the Pentagon.” The creaking and shifting of thirty old desks, audible sounds of tension filling my Film as Lit classroom. “Let’s be careful not to panic. This is how rumors get started. We are all safe here” — saying it as much for myself as for my students. // Running upstairs to Paul’s room between first and second period to watch cable piping into a carted CRT TV. Arriving just in time to witness the second tower becoming dust. Hearing Dan Rather’s voice handling the harrowing phrase “the World Trade Center … is no more” as a thousand more souls were transitioning. // Jan running home to get rabbit ears for her classroom TV. Swapping teenagers back and forth, giving them a choice of bearing witness or protecting themselves from bearing witness. // Trying all day to ring friends in New York — Jamie, Georgia — the whole world was trying, and that’s why we weren’t getting through. Wondering were they lost and who did they lose? // Stopping at Mom’s house after school, watching a plane hitting the south tower on a continuous loop of wide shots because the close shots were too horrific. Saying, “Mom, I’m so glad Dad’s not alive to witness this.” Her admitting: “I was thinking the same thing this morning.” Thinking In what world would we ever have these thoughts, let alone share them? Then thinking this new world. // Processing the day with my neighbors on our six-family fire escape in the Central West End. Feeling hopelessness and impatience with the lack of information, sickness thinking of the wounding of three American cities. // Looking for a distraction, not fully conscious of my privilege of being able to do so. Heading with Timberly to the Coffee Cartel and listening to Jeff playing music, while drinking to forget the fragments of a fractured day. // Remembering twenty-years-ago-tomorrow. //