Twenty Years Forward

September 11, 2001 dawned a beautiful day in Southern California. In the pre-dawn hours, I had a great gym workout. As the sun rose, I drove to the job I loved teaching high school students about words and how we shape them to make meaning of our lives, of our world.

I felt so good, in fact, I didn’t turn the radio on. I just drove. I probably sang, as I often did in the truck on the way to work. But as I exited the freeway, I finally punched the button to listen to a Los Angeles based news station. I taught Journalism, after all; I needed to stay current on breaking news.

“Breaking” would be the operative word that day.

Breaking planes. Breaking buildings. Breaking bodies. Breaking families. Breaking lives. Breaking hearts. So many hearts breaking. So many hearts hoping against hope. Then breaking many days later.

Breaking routines.

Teachers were gathered in the staff lounge when I arrived, riveted to the news coverage.

“What do we say to our students?” someone asked.

“I’m not changing my lesson plan!” a teacher snapped back. Astonished, I looked at her, saw her eyes filled with tears, and then I wanted to hug her. Denial is a powerful manipulator.

“Are you scared?” I asked the fourteen-year-old freshmen in my first class.

“Yes,” they answered.

“You’re safe here,” I told them. “I promise.” I told them, too, that I loved them, something I had never said to a class before. But I would say that to my students every year after 9/11. And from that day forward until I retired, I would ask myself at the beginning of each school year: How can I make my students feel safe in my classroom this year?

Because, to be honest, I haven’t felt safe since 9/11.

The war in Afghanistan, hunting down Osama bin Laden, did not make me feel safe.

Mandating security screenings at airports did not make me feel safe.

Instituting a “war on terror” in which we clumsily target individuals who do not look or believe as we do has not made me feel safe.

What I need more of to make me feel safe is not an escalation of fear.

What I need more of to make me feel safe is love.

At the end of the day on September 11, 2001, I gathered my children around me. I needed to feel their love, and I needed them to know that no matter what happened in the coming days, I loved them fiercely.

Because this is what I learned from 9/11: Love is stronger than fear.

And no matter what has broken, love will find a way to heal it.