September 11, 2001 - Tuesday
Today started and ended much like any other day for Harry. This morning Harry and I played more with index cards at breakfast and somehow I found myself lining up index cards in rows to make sentences. I know it's too much for a boy of 21 months and Harry is certainly not reading sentences, but he's leading the way with this index card endeavor and he seems interested. This afternoon after I picked him up from daycare we went outside and played in the driveway like many other days before. Harry, of course, had no idea that today hateful people from around the world had likely killed more Americans in one day than on any other day in history, save Gettysburg, by slamming hijacked airplanes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers and that I had literally spent the entire afternoon watching television and web reports.

Harry had no way to imagine that thousands of families had been ripped apart or that the world was a sadder place than it was yesterday. He is just a boy, playing in the driveway, hitting a little ball. And, I am his father, whose mind has, for these wonderful moments in the driveway, been dragged away from the realities and horrors of the world on this day. We are looking at squirrels and crows. Harry does not notice that there are no planes in the sky.


Comments, opinions?