My September 11th Story

Washington Square Park, September 16, 2001 NYC
photo credit: Jim Gavenus

You Cannot Measure Your Life In Coffee Spoons

By

Maria Garcia Teutsch

On the morning of September 11, 2001, as usual, my five-year-old son woke me up before the alarm went off. His joie de vivre something I’d learned to cherish, though it never quite infiltrated my inherent need for quiet and solitude in the morning. I tried to hide it as best I could, offering a cookie until I could get my first cup of coffee down, and enter the world of the living which in my case involved teaching at my local community college.

I walked into the living room, coffee in hand and my then-husband had the T.V. blaring as usual, much to my annoyance. (Again, hadn’t finished my first cup). I saw a clear blue sky and two tall buildings that were immediately recognizable, I had been in one of these buildings--had a glass of champagne at the Greatest Bar on Earth at age 19--and then I saw a huge plume of smoke as a plane smashed into it. My knees gave out and I fell onto the ottoman, coffee slopping my robe. I could not look away, I could not think, and soon thereafter, footage of the other plane. I live in California so I was seeing images that had already happened, were not in “real time.” When I could think again my first thought was that I did not want my son to see these images.

I did what most Americans did that morning--went to work. I dropped my son off at kindergarten and went to teach my creative writing class. I felt as though I were walking through butter, and when I entered my classroom, the faces of my students were stunned, one student crying and being consoled. Her brother was flying back to California that morning, no one could get a hold of him. No one could get any calls through to New York. I told them they did not have to stay, they could go home, but no one did. We had already created in this space a safe place where we could talk about our fears.

My next class was a literature class and these students all looked at me as though I was some kind of scary prophet. You see, the week before I had done a workshop on the Taliban, bringing the attention of my students to the plight of women in Afghanistan, and the organization RAWA, which helped Afghani women and sought to create international awareness of their plight in an effort to end their brutal oppression.

The week after the attacks I asked my students to write letters doing what I have just done here, reflecting on the events of that day. We made a 20-foot-collage of these letters framed by pictures of historical buildings in New York City, including the World Trade Center, interspersed with pictures of all of the presidents of the United States. It was beautiful and sad and cathartic.

That morning I realized that even before my first cup of coffee, I was connected to this greater beast of humanity, in all of its beauty, in all of its horror. 

The Homestead Review I edited dedicated to the victims of 9/11