Karen Lynn Vidra, The Texas Tornado, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
The Day I Finally Cried...An Essay (By Ronee' Le-Anne Reaux, Aged 14 1/2) by Karen Lynn Vidra, The Texas Tornado
Friday, September 7, 2007
Rated "PG" by the Author.
A teenaged girl is asked to write about what she remembers most about September 11, 2001, as part of a writing assignment for Creative Writing class at her school.
Ronee' Le-Anne Reaux
Creative Writing, Ms. Guilgud
Donelson Senior High School, Nashville, Tennessee
Friday, September 7, 2007~
I don't think I will ever forget what transpired that awful, unforgettable day.
It has nearly been six years since that history-changing day, when our country was attacked by terrorists; yet every time I hear about it or am reminded of it, my heart twists in a knot of pain--and I remember all over again.
I will never forget the helplessness I felt when my teacher back then, Mrs. Hemingway, told us the news that the Twin Towers had been hit by planes that beautiful late summer morning, or the sensation of my heart dropping to my toes.
I will never forget the fear I felt when I started thinking about why did this happen, or feeling the terror building up inside of me as I thought about what was going on in New York City, Washington DC, and that field in Pennsylvania, and worrying if any more of our buildings were going to get attacked.
I will never forget the face of Principal Fairchild later that morning as he broke the news to us that the Twin Towers had fallen, adding to the already huge number of the dead, and then his announcing that school was to be letting out early (like at noon) until things calmed down a bit.
All I could do back then (I was only a little girl going on nine when this happened) was cry--or look at the quiet, reserved, sad face of our classmate, Fahid Muhammed, who was Muslim; I remember wondering what she wsa thinking about all of this, since it was Muslim people who did this in the first place.
I didn't say a word: all I did was look at Fahid, thinking about what she may have been thinking. I felt sorry for her.
As the buses came to take us kids home that day (we left the school just prior to the noon hour), we didn't talk or laugh like usual. We sat there, silent and still as stones, all thinking about the same thing: the attacks. We wanted nothing more than to get home to our families where we felt a little bit safer.
Upon getting home, maman greeted us with huge hugs and kisses. She had tears on her cheeks. She was crying. I started crying again, and when I asked if I could watch the news reports, she said "N-O"; she didn't want us to see the carnage or the reports being displayed on (nearly) every channel. Instead, she told us to go into our rooms and play (or did she mean pray; I can't remember!).
That was the day when I started writing. I started writing about what was going on, and I started composing stories, poems. I've never published any of them, but I still have them in a notebook somewhere.
I still write now; that day opened up something inside me, and I haven't been able to put down my pen (or my muse) since. It was like God put something into my heart, and He gave me a special gift that has not ended; my writing continues.
That night, our family went to church, where we prayed for the dead, the injured, the missing, their families, their friends. We prayed for our nation, asking for God's protection around us, and we even prayed for the terrorists, asking God to change their hearts. We prayed for our leaders, asking God to give them wisdom during this time of crisis, and we asked that God intervene in our broken hearts as we grieved for the lost.
It was a powerful moment; the spirit of the Lord was very strong that night. It comforted me to know that even amidst all of this tragedy, somehow God was still in control. I don't think I cried as much as I did that day!
I've been crying ever since, particularly on the anniversary dates of the attacks. Now we are coming up on six years since it happened, and again, I have again been asked to participate in the city's rememberance of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on our nation. I have been asked to sing.
I am more than glad to do this, don't get me wrong; but at the same time, the pain I feel about it surfaces all over again, and it is all I can do to keep from breaking down into tears. It is very hard for me to sing "God Bless America" or "America The Beautiful" when my own heart is shattered at the memory of 9/11/01.
Yet as an American citizen, I feel it is my patriotic duty to remember; we all need to remember. To forget would be downright stupid. It could happen again; we must be vigilent and do all we possibly can to protect our people, watch over our borders, do everything we possibly can to prevent another terrorist attack on our shores.
We are vulnerable to yet another attack, and the next time it may very well be worse than September 11, 2001 was. Far worse.
I can't imagine that. Or maybe I can.
I choose to remember. I know a few people who were directly affected by it, and I even lost some friends (acquaintances, really, but I still knew them) in the attacks. It affected me in a most powerful way, and I am not the same Ronee' I was prior to the attacks. Back then I was a little kid who thought the world would be good forever.
Now I know that is a lie, that the world has indeed fallen into a state of disrepair, and that because of the attacks, our nation is at war with an unseen enemy. We have been at war for nearly six years now, and it doesn't show any signs of ending anytime soon. It is indeed a very scary, uncertain time for our nation.
Now we must remember once again, and I must again deal with the pain that I've kept tucked inside my heart. I will never forget, and I pray that the rest of America doesn't forget the horrors of that day. We must remember; we must not forget--EVER.
An old soldier salute a sweet American girl that wouldn't lose her faith despite an increasingly ungodly world around her.
Dear Renee, forget? NEVER!
God Bless America
Georg
