Five years ago today

The school that I worked at was not far from the airport. The sounds of airplanes landing were always in the air but the airport was just far enough away that they didn't bother you.

I remember the anxiety when a plane would come in that day. We knew that they had grounded the planes but some were still in the air just trying to land at the closest airport. I had never really listened to the sounds of them landing before. I noticed that day. I stood outside and watched when each one came in.

I remember how quite the sky was for the next few days. I remember the anxiety that we all had when they started flying again.

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They had a moment of silence at school today. At the same time that the first plane crashed into the tower. They didn't tell us that they were going to do this. The children acted like typical children and were not very silent of the 30 odd seconds that it took. I was irrationally angry at them. I knew that the anger was more than what was necessary. I took them to the carpet area and talked about moments of silence. How they are to remain still, how they are to think about what had happened and how they are to be respectful to the others, even if they really didn't care. We had another moment of silence. This time they were silent.