What can anyone say? This has all been beyond imagining.

Tuesday morning I was sitting in Russian class translating a McDonalds menu from Moscow and the principal's voice came over the PA system. At first I thought a student had died - it's happened before and he was using the same phrases as he did then. And then he told us about the planes. You all know what happened and I won't repeat what the reporters have been repeating for three days now. I will say I'm glad I heard it the way I did, though - most of the students aren't happy with the way the principal runs things, but he did well this time. We got all the facts at once without any speculation or hysteria or video footage. He finished the announcement by telling us it was a terrible shock and we would have to be very supportive of each other during this dark time. I looked over at Danny - everyone always joked that he was going to become a famous terrorist and blow up the World Trade Centers. He just crossed himself.

In chemistry a few of us were saying it was strange Mr. T had implied we would all be numb with shock. We all were for a minute, but most of us seemed to be okay afterwards. It was far away and there was no immediate danger to us. On the way out of chemistry I ran into a friend and remarked, "And we always thought Danny would be the one to do this." She looked very grave. "Danny's father is in New York. He was supposed to tour the World Trade Center today."

I went on to lunch, this time genuinely numb with shock. In the courtyard everyone was reacting differently - Dandy was yelling and waving her arms around, insisting that all of Manhatten was sure to be destroyed. It was strange because she's normally very collected and has a rather acidic wit, but on the few occasions I've seen her scared she really loses it. Amy was comforting everybody. Bridget and Simon were talking quietly about something else, in their own little world as usual. And Danny was trying to pretend everything was normal. He would talk about it - "I tried to call him but I couldn't get through. That either means he switched his cell phone off or it's in a thousand pieces around New York City." - but when he wasn't talking about it he was trying to joke, trying to make the rest of us smile. None of us knew what to say to him. I finally had to retreat to an empty second-story bathroom to lock myself in a stall and sob.

The rest of the day was the worst I had known in a long time. The teachers scarcely talked about it at all - in art the teacher asked how we were and then gave us our sketch assignments. In American Lit we went ahead with out seminar on Moby Dick. At the end of the class the teacher said only, "Your children will ask you about this day. I suggest you remember it well." I had been thinking the same thing and my journal entry for Tuesday is about eight pages long.

I spent the afternoon and evening wishing morning would come so I could go to school and find out if Danny's father was okay. Finally that night I saw this entry on Caelia's journal and found out he was safe. The next morning we all tried to go about business as usual, with mixed success. Some people had pain all over their faces and most of us looked sort of blank, but some honestly weren't affected that much. I guess I started out in the last category, but the thought of Danny's father - of what that would mean, to be sixteen and have your father killed by terrorists - brought the whole thing so much closer. It's always that way with me, I guess. The thought of people dying doesn't make so much of an impression on me, but thinking of their families at home trying to live without them strikes me to the core.

So Tuesday night I spent mostly writing and not doing homework. I really wished the teachers hadn't assigned the normal amount of homework because I ended up spending most of the afternoons thinking and the nights and mornings desperately trying to get my homework finished before class. So I still don't really know the Cyrilic alphabet and I haven't turned in that much homework. Fortunatley a few teachers decided to collect things a day late, or my GPA would have really plummeted by now.

Yesterday wasn't quite so bad. On the bus ride home I realized how many American flags were flying in every neighborhood we rode through. Outside our house we still had a banner of some flowers in a watering can. So when I got home I went up to the attic to find the American flag. I thought we had two, but when I got there I found only one very battered, faded flag attatched by one corner to a rusted pole with masking tape. I asked Mom and she said she had thrown away the other one last summer because it had a rip. So we were left only with the ancient one that came with the house, the one we had never flown.

When I got downstairs with it my mother looked at me doubtfully. "Do you really think it's the right thing to fly a faded, ripped flag?" It did look pretty pathetic. But I figured that every hardware store in the country was sure to be sold out of flags. Besides, any American flag was better than a watering can on such a day as this. And so I took it up to my parent's bed and got out the needle and heavy-duty thread.

I turned on the radio and started sewing. I used to be a Girl Scout and I know as well as anyone that you're not supposed to repair a flag. When it's too battered to use anymore you have a ceremony and you burn it stripe by stripe. But I also think that if this week teaches us anything it should teach us about perseverance. The military will do what they do and few of us can change that, but the duty of the American people now is to start cleaning things up. We have to repair the tears in our lives and the crumbled buildings of our cities. And so rather than go colorless, I fixed our flag. I must have been there for an hour and a half, listening to the interviews on NPR and sewing stripe to stripe. I repaired every rip in that flag and though it'll never be as good as it once was, it flies with our hearts behind it as much as any other flag. Other people gave blood or drove up to help in New York, but this was my way of dealing with things. Catharsis, I suppose.

September 7
September 14