I hate oatmeal. Always have, always will. It’s a texture thing, because why is it goopy yet firm at the same time? I made an exception for Ms. Martha’s oatmeal, though. 

Ms. Martha had been shuffling around the kitchen at Early Bird for as long as I could remember, even before my mom bought the Alabama day care center in 1998. Armed with her white New Balance sneakers, a hairnet, a giant pot, and a whole lotta magic, she made the only oatmeal I’ve ever loved in my entire life. Short and “big boned,” as she described herself, Ms. Martha always smelled of cloves (her favorite spice), cigarettes (six a day—no more, no less), and Jergens lotion (the original cherry almond scent). Her aroma was comforting to me, which, looking back, seems fitting. Ms. Martha was always making sure everyone was taken care of. She always had your back and always had hugs to go around. I can still hear her raspy Southern drawl:

What do you need, baby?
Do you need a hug?
Did you eat? Let me make you some food.

Every morning, she cooked a giant pot of oatmeal to feed to the kids—and employees like me—who came in without having had breakfast. I ate that oatmeal for breakfast five days a week for three years straight while I worked my way through undergrad—that sticky, gloppy, cinnamon-flavored sludge that clung to the back of my throat until I washed it down with whatever juice she was serving that morning. Apple was my favorite, because it tasted good with the cinnamon. Sure, I could have brought my own breakfast, but I was a broke college student and the prospect of a free meal was too good to pass up.

September 11, 2001, started off like most mornings, except I had a bit of a travel hangover—I had been on a flight home from Dallas really late the night before. Despite the lack of sleep (I was eighteen, and who really needs sleep when you’re eighteen, right?), I got up, showered, dressed, and drove to work having not eaten breakfast or even bothered to think about it. I knew Ms. Martha would have oatmeal ready when I got there. 

In the kitchen, she smiled her big, toothy smile as soon as I walked in. 

“You best come give me a hug, baby! I been missin’ ya!” she said as she wrapped her soft arms around me and gave the kind of hug only Ms. Martha could give. “You hungry?”

“Now, Ms. Martha, you know I didn’t eat breakfast!” I laughed. 

She chuckled but shook a finger at me. “Go say hi to your mama while I get you some food.”

I hugged her one more time, then stepped out of the kitchen into the breakfast room, where I found most of my preschoolers working on their oatmeal between gulps from Styrofoam cups of juice. 

My mom and Sheri, Ms. Martha’s daughter and our three-year-old-class teacher, were talking quietly in the corner over their own bowls of oatmeal. I hugged them both.

“Glad you made it back,” my mom said. “Now, go get something to eat and tell me about your trip.” 

I was sitting at the breakfast table choking down my oatmeal—choking because we had grape juice that day—and talking about my trip to Dallas as a few more sleepy kids straggled in when the voice on the radio said something about an explosion at the World Trade Center. There was some commotion between the three of us as we all sang a medley of “What did they say?,” “They said what?,” and “What’s going on?” Ms. Martha took the radio back to the kitchen so she could turn up the volume without scaring the kids who were old enough to pay attention. “I’ll keep an eye on it; y’all take care of your classes,” she told us. So that’s what we did. I abandoned my oatmeal and herded my four-year-olds into the preschool room to get our lesson started for the day. We were learning about the letter D.

Despite our initial shock, none of us really thought anything of the incident. We didn’t even know it was an attack yet. The news stations were trying to figure out what was going on, and it all seemed very far away from us in our little Alabama day care. But Ms. Martha kept the radio on in the kitchen as she cleaned up from breakfast and started getting ready for lunch. I’ll never forget the look of fear on her face when she came into my preschool room and whispered, “They saying it’s terrorists. Could be more attacks coming, we don’t know. They say all the military bases going on lockdown.” She paused before she told me the rest. “They saying Fort Benning could be a target.”

That was when the panic hit. My dad worked on base at Fort Benning. “I need to call my dad. I need to call my dad right now!” I whispered with as much force as one person can whisper. I wanted to scream the words, but I didn’t want to scare my preschoolers. 

“Your mama’s trying right now; she already knows,” Ms. Martha told me. “It’s gonna be all right.”

A few minutes later, my mom was at the door of my classroom. She couldn’t get in touch with my dad. We were all scared but we couldn’t let the kids know, so we gathered them all, except the infants, into the movie room and popped in a “Barney & Friends” VHS tape. Parents were already flowing in to pick up their children early, so we just needed to keep them occupied while we glued ourselves to the radio just outside the door, hoping to hear something, hoping to hear nothing. 

At some point—I don’t know when, time seemed like it had stopped—my dad called. Mom put him on speaker. “We’re going into lockdown. No one in or out indefinitely. They’re worried that . . .” The phone cut out before he could finish. 

My mom and I stared at each other for what seemed like forever but could have only been a minute. Finally, she stood up. “I have to go get your brother from school,” she said and disappeared to grab her purse.

I held my tears until my mom left, but I couldn’t hold them in once Ms. Martha wrapped her arms around me, her familiar aroma of cloves and cigarettes and Jergens enveloping me like a warm blanket straight out of the dryer. I can still hear her raspy Southern drawl:

I got you, baby.
I know you’re scared, but it’s gonna be all right.
How ’bout some more oatmeal?