#NeverForget: My 9/11 Poem

A few days late, I know, but I feel like sharing. On 9/11/01 I was 8 months pregnant and teaching a 9am English Composition class at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Before class, my students and I could see the towers from a hallway window--black smoke coming from one of them. We'd heard a plane had crashed into it--pictured a small plane, an accident. Numbly, I gathered the students in for class. On our break an hour later, one young man went outside and ran back in: "They're GONE!" The classroom next door had the TV tuned to CNN with the diptych of the WTC site and the Pentagon. We were told to go to the main lobby of campus. First, I went to my office, called my husband, sent emails to my family.

I've written more about that morning here. What I think about now is my students, all of them freshmen, most of them new to FIT and NYC. I think of the young man whose cousin "went missing in the towers," according to an email. He disappeared and dropped out of class. A couple others, from my honors writing class, left FIT and went home at their parents' insistence. The city seemed suddenly too dangerous for them.

A few years later, I drafted this poem based on a prompt given by George Bilgere at the Antioch Writers' Workshop. I worked on it from time to time, and recently it was selected by Kathleen Ossip  for the "Child" issue of WSQ.  Never forget.

literary mama

Vicki pointed out that a new review of Saint Nobody, by Ginny Kaczmarek, is now up on Literary Mama, one of the coolest webzines around. I'm thrilled to have my book mentioned there!

beyond words

The little girl says few words that are clearly distinguishable, but boy, can she communicate. She babble and prattles but now, at age six, she is no longer just "jargoning," in speech therapy parlance. She is not just imitating the patterns of her mother tongue, she is saying words and sentences she understands--she knows what she is talking about. She approximates, and very often we can understand what she is saying. We also become accustomed to her usual approximations, familiar phrases--"Mom, could I please have some water" sounds like "Mom. Quee-eye-buppa water?"

She does have this habit, when she is denied a request, of simply repeating that request, several times if necessary. Repetition, to Stella, seems to be a mode of argument. It is frustrating sometimes, but I find that if I alter my response to avoid the actual word "No," she will capitulate and often let the issue drop. At bedtime, for example:

"Mom, can I have a book?"
"No, Stella. It's time for sleepies."
"Mom, can I have a a book?" (identical inflection)
"No, Stella. I told you. It's late, you've been put to bed, it's time to sleep."
"Mom--" pause until she has my attention again-- "Can I have a book?"
I come in close, kiss, snuggle her neck. "Nighty night."
At this point, she gives in and settles down.

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Why do I write? I write because Stella cannot, because she may never be able to get down on paper her own experience. I write because I need to tell what it is like, what it is like to be her (I conjecture this), I write to exorcise guilt, I write to ask questions like, "Does she understand why I slapped her hands for going on the roof or slapped her bottom for pooping in her pull-up?" (Is it just about me making sure that she is properly afraid, that she learns to sense danger or at least builds a store in her memory of what things and places are dangerous? In trying to ward off danger, Mommy becomes the danger.)

I write because no one else can get to know this little girl in the way I can, because no one else is her mother. I write because I need to learn what it truly means to be her mother, I write to instruct myself in how to live this life.