This morning I logged on to my computer intending to file yet another pithy entry about the trials and travails of life on the domestic front lines, but my plans changed when I read Bharat’s lovely post marking the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist bombings. I was living in New York at that time – I still am – and for me, like so many of my friends and neighbors, it is a rare week when it doesn’t occupy my thoughts, or at the very least cross my mind.

Bharat writes that on that day we were all victims, and he has a point, but that’s not the whole story. So if you’ll forgive a temporary darkening in tone, I’d like to add my own thoughts.

When the first plane hit the Trade Center Tower, I had just dropped my daughter off at school; it was the beginning of second grade for her. It was a glorious day, warm and clear with a bright blue sky, and as I walked back home I looked up at what I thought were a flock of homing pigeons. We live in an Italian neighborhood, and there are still a few people who keep pigeon coops on their roofs and fly their birds in big swooping flocks that sort of glimmer when the sun hits their wings just so. It’s an Old World hobby, like playing bocce or making wine in the cellar. After a moment I realized it wasn’t birds – the movements were too chaotic and random – so I stopped. I was passing the pharmacy, and a man standing outside told me a plane had hit one of the Trade Center buildings. At that moment I realized it wasn’t birds in the sky, but papers, thousands of pieces of paper that had floated across the East River and were fluttering above my Brooklyn neighborhood. And so I ran.

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