ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001—
I was eight years old. I had recently started seeing myself as Big—I was reading The Prisoner of Azkaban; I’d skipped The Chamber of Secrets, by accident. My reading level spiked considerably that summer, as I’d been determined to keep up with what my older brother was reading.
I knew I’d picked up the third book, and that I’d only read the first. All I’d read previously were series like Junie B. Jones and The Boxcar Children. I didn’t realize the importance of sequence order, or understand how the plot carried through each new release, chronologically.
Ten minutes of silent reading was never enough, once I started reading Harry Potter. I was reading better and faster by the day, but that day, I’d barely breached my fourth page. I kept re-reading the description of the Firebolt in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies. Is ‘ash’ the same as ‘ash-leaved’? I wondered. I’d planted a boxelder tree in the front garden at my house, and its leaves touched my second-story bedroom window after just two summers of growing.
Could a branch from my tree be used to make a flying broomstick?
The gaze of my inner eye has always been sharp. I was just then beginning to fall-in while reading fiction, and to this day I remember the way I pictured the things I read. The image of the broomstick was vivid in my mind, but kept changing; to me, the Firebolt didn’t resemble the chapter art. I saw a sleek, curved staff of beige-gray wood, with a brown grain and gold lettering.
I was lying on my stomach with my feet in the air, propped up on my forearms, pinching a page close to my nose, reading beneath the window in the back corner of my Second grade classroom, when my teacher crossed the room, stepped delicately around me, and twisted a tilt wand—closing the blinds.
But why? It was nice outside, and the early afternoon light was so good for reading. I didn’t say any of this, but craned my neck, raised up on my elbows, and looked a question at my teacher.
The small smile she returned seemed odd; she touched the painted wood beads on her long necklace with one hand, and pinched the fingertips touching the beads with the other.
“Is silent reading over already?” I asked then, sticking a bookmark from the public library in the spine so it would just peek out the top when I closed it.
“Just about,” my teacher whispered, then glanced at the analog clock above the door. She softly clucked her tongue. So I got up, returned to my seat, and don’t remember much else until I got on the bus later in the afternoon.
I usually sat somewhere in the middle rows next to my neighbor friend, who lived across the street from me. We always got dropped off at the end of our road and walked home together. But that day, we moved up to the seat directly behind our bus driver about halfway through the ride. I don’t remember the driver well (some years older than my dad, always wearing the same ballcap, and kindly), but I remember him telling all us kids to quiet down way more than he usually did. He’d seemed in a bad mood, but he said goodbye to each and every child at each and every stop, like always.
But I kept hearing the word “radio” as kids got off the bus. So my friend and I decided to move up, to listen.
BREAKING NEWS. Two airplanes crashed into a skyscraper? How far away is New York City? How come one plane is probably just a terrible accident, but two planes means we’re being attacked?
I was eight years old, and so was my friend. We didn’t speak again, till we got to our stop. We sat with rapt ears and wide eyes, exchanging glances that begged the questions—What’s going on? Are you scared? Is this like, really really bad?
I couldn’t picture a plane crashing, or dust clouds rolling over a city. I hadn’t even reached the chapter in Prisoner of Azkaban when Harry falls off his broomstick, and it crashes into the Whomping Willow and gets smashed to bits. I had never seen, and could not imagine, such destruction. But I was afraid. I knew big buildings like I’d seen in Chicago and Indy weren’t supposed to fall down, or get hit by planes.
“Go straight home today, okay you two?” Our bus driver knew the two of us often went to one or the other’s yard to play without checking with our parents first.
We walked fast and slow along the steady downslope of our road. The edge of my friend’s yard was closer, and as we reached it, he dashed to the left with a wave, and I looked up at the sky. I saw an airplane going over way up high, and I ran right—the rest of the way to my front door.
That was 25 years ago. I was a second grader reading Harry Potter for the first time and in the wrong order. I did not see, and I did not understand, how the world was changed that day. But it is strange to recognize that I had no way to imagine how the tragic events on 9/11 would shape world, as I know it, today.
But I will always remember where, and who, I was.
09-10-2026
Hedera Reads 
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