September 11, 2001 is a day no American will ever forget. In the early hours of that morning I had a dream that I would also never forget. I dreamt of being at school. I was the only one there as I stood in a hallway looking around. I notice a soda bottle that seem to be shaken. A kid ran by and messed with the bottle and ran off again and a few moments later it blew up. It made my heart jump a beat and at that very moment my mom runs into my room to wake me and asks me to go watch the television with her. A junior in high school and living in Tucson, Arizona, I had no idea what the World Trade Centers were but I stood there in disbelief with my mom as we watched the second plane hit. My family went on with their normal morning routines and she sent us to school on the bus as usual. As I am older now and a mother, I question why she sent us to school but being so young It didn't cross my mind. School was something I had to do and so I went on with it. I think my mom thought maybe she didn't want us to be scared and alarm us of anything more happening. I took the bus that morning and literally there were about 5 of us on the bus. School was the same. Teachers canceled their plans as we watched the news all day as we discussed and watched speculations of what happened. One teacher tried to explain to us in detail what happened but it never really clicked. I just knew that we were attacked. Till this day, I believe the dream has some weird connection to that day as weird as it may sounds.
Now ten years later, I have children of my own and I spend time wondering what I would do if something horrific happened to us again. I just could not fathom the thoughts of something happening again to our beloved country. This year as a way to introduce the topic to the children I am going to keep it on a positive note since they are too young to talk about the bad just yet (we don't want to scare them). We will talk about heroes and great things people do for us. I will read them Fireboat and New York's Bravest. I think these two books are great books for young children. They are not too scary and they softly touch on the subject. They really just focus on firefighters and one particular Fireboat and how they became such great heroes to us. And that is the only point I want to teach them this early on.
In the comments below, Where were you on September 11, 2011 and how do you remember that day with friends and family?
No comments:
Post a Comment