Monday is the fifth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. What to say?

I guess I can say that for me, this was the most surprising and most devastating news event of my life. It's one of those things where you remember exactly where you were.

Mainly from that day I remember a sense of discombobulation and fear. The main sensation I remember was one of wondering when the other shoe would drop, what else would happen.

I heard about it in the campus bookstore. At that time, I was in the habit of walking over there to pick up a Dallas paper to read in my office. (That was pretty much before blogs for me - now I read a lot of my news online. And Dallas doesn't deliver papers out of state any more.)

In the bookstore, they usually had a local country station playing. I usually mentally tuned it out. But this morning, there was someone speaking, with that peculiar urgency in their voice that boded bad news. I asked someone what was going on. She said, "Oh, someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center."

It didn't register on me at first. I had a mental image of the old King Kong movie, the Empire State Building, small planes circling. I pictured a tourist plane and thought what an idiotic mistake for a pilot to make. And I hoped no one in the building had been killed.

Later, one of the Art professors stopped me in the parking lot. "It was a 747," she said, not needing to preface her statement. "Someone on the news said it was terrorists."

That was when I first felt the dropping of my stomach.

Back in my department, the secretary had hauled out a small black and white tv. By dint of using aluminum foil, she improvised an antenna and we were able to pick up one station - a CBS affiliate.

We stood around the room - in a semi circle. I remember standing there with my arms wrapped around my chest, hugging myself - holding myself together.

When they showed the replay (I think it was on replay by then) of the towers falling, I shook my head and said, "I cannot watch this any more." And I went up to my office. And tried to write a Biostats exam. (I still cannot happily teach probability in that class. There are too many memories tied up with it - that is what I was teaching then.)

I worked for a while but mainly surfed the web - the NYTimes website was down, CNN was down. It was an eerie feeling of isolation. I tried calling my parents, couldn't get them, freaked out.

Remember - this was like 9 am CDT - we still didn't know what was happening. I left a shaky message telling them that if they got the message, to (a) please call me either at home or in my office and (b) to call my brother and sister in law first, and tell them to get the hell out of Chicago. (Okay, I didn't say "hell" but that was what I was thinking). Because, at that time, I figured all the major cities were going to be attacked - Chicago, LA, possibly Dallas and Atlanta.

My colleague, Doug, who was new that fall, stopped me in the hall, and said, "I'm supposed to give an exam this week. What do I do? Do I postpone it out of respect to the people who died and out of concern that maybe some of my students lost someone? Do I just go ahead and do it?" And I realized he was looking to me as someone with a bit more experience. But all I could do was shrug and say I had no idea, there was no precedent for this. (I don't remember what he wound up doing. I think he postponed the test).

At some point my department chair came around telling everyone to go home, they were closing the university. It was unclear whether it was out of respect for those who lost their lives or out of concern for our safety.

So I went home. And put on the television. One thing I remember about that day - about those days - is that all the fluff channels "went away." The Food channel and HGTV and the shopping channels and IIRC, even Cartoon Network - they all closed down, put up signs saying that they were suspending broadcast out of respect for those who died.

So I sat and watched the news. And I knitted on a scarf.

Finally my parents called. They were not nearly as freaked out as I was.

(My mother, talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, said that was the one time when she really and truly feared the world was going to end. And they lived through Vietnam and Korea and the protests of the 60s and 70s and they were kids during WWII - so I guess they had a greater sense of perspective).

My dad did counsel me to fill my gas tank and get some bottled water just in case.
Bottled water wasn't an issue - I also bought an extra jar of peanut butter and some granola bars and some cans of fruit. But gas was. I saw one station charging close to $6. (I have never bought gas there since). I wound up paying something over $2, I think, and waited in line close to an hour.

The thing I remember though, was how POLITE everyone was to each other. How understanding. I saw a guy let a woman with kids go ahead of him because he said it was more important for her to get home fast with her kids.

So I went home. I don't remember the rest of the day. Most of my memories of those days are sort of kaleidoscopic. I guess I also went to the bank that day - I was scheduled to BUY MY HOUSE on the 13th and I was afraid that the banks might shut down. So I got a cashier's check for the cost of the house. And I locked it in a file cabinet I had (I was terrified of it being stolen). I walked around with the key in my bra - no fake - for two days.

One thing I do remember about that time was how polite and how kind people were, at least for a short time. I had a former student stop by to talk- he wanted to be sure I was holding up okay. Lots of people asked me if I knew anyone involved, I guess they figured since I was from "back East" (Illinois is technically East) that I might have known someone. (I did know someone, but not well*). There were lots of memorial services, lots of people offered to pray, lots of people offered to talk.

There was almost a suspension of hostilities during that time - people were kinder, they were more tolerant, they were more open. Do you know how sad it makes me to think that it takes an event of that magnitude, something so horrific, to shock people into treating each other civilly? But there you are.

I remember the Friday after it happened - I had just bought my house but was in no position to think of moving or of painting or of anything - they asked people to light a candle and step outside in the evening. I don't remember if it was a nationwide thing or if it was only local. But I did. I went out on the little patio of my apartment, with a votive candle in a drinking glass so the wind wouldn't blow it out.

And you know? That was the first time I really cried. Where I just sat down and gave in to the feeling of helplessness and fear and sadness and overwhelmedness that almost 3000 people were wiped out in a single event. 3000! That would have been almost all the students at my university! Some of my students observed in wonder and sadness that that was more people than lived in the towns where they grew up.

And to the fact that there were people out there who hated us for who we were, who did not blanch at the thought of killing children or old people or doctors or nuns or or or...any of the "innocent groups" you want to name. I cried for that, too. And I rage against it now - it is one of the things that makes me angry about how the world works.

But eventually, I pulled myself up. I had a role to play, teaching to do. A house to paint and renovate and move to. (And you know? I think having the painting and work on the house to do that fall saved me. It kept me from sitting in my apartment glumly watching commentators yammer. Instead, I took my little radio and listened to Rangers games and scraped and painted and made ready. And it gave me hope.)

So, since then, what do I do? Every year I say a little prayer for the families of the people who died. And a prayer that those who would use terror tactics have a change of heart. And a quixotic and unrealistic prayer that we may someday see something like a lasting peace. (And, selfishly, I ask for it to happen while I am still here to see it). But other than that, I don't do much. I figure going about my daily life - keeping my chin up and my upper lip stiff and thinking of Mrs. Miniver - are the best things I can do right now. Because I become a sack of jelly if I let myself think of the "what if" or think of all the bad stuff that can happen. But if I give myself a task - something to do - then I can keep on going and tell myself that I am competent, I can control enough things to keep myself alive. And more than that, I can teach people so that they can go out and have better lives than they might have otherwise. Or I can knit hats so people won't have cold heads. Or I can try to teach a few kids that fighting among each other isn't cool and that God loves them even if the rest of the world seems to be against them.

And really, maybe, that little is enough.

*I knew someone - not well - who died in the attack. Todd Weaver. He was a couple years behind me in high school. I dimly remembered who he was; a letter from the Headmaster of the school a few weeks later was how I found out.

One of my cousins saw it happen. In person, I mean. He was in Manhattan at the time. He's since moved away and married. From talking to him since, I think the events affected him even though he would probably claim they hadn't.