Ms. Carnacki and I took our vacation on the week of the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. We did not want to see the constant reminders of one of the worst days in the nation’s history. After the attacks, I had traveled to New York City because the New York Times wrote an editorial that if people wanted to help, what New York needed was a return of the tourists. I didn’t want to be a tourist, but it gave me a chance to see friends in the city, to overtip waitresses and cab drivers and to do something. For weeks after the attacks, I wrote thank you notes to different embassies and consuls of nations that had expressed their support and condolences after the attacks. It seemed like the right thing to do, a bit of personal diplomacy if you will. It’s easy to forget how united the nation and nearly all the world were after Sept. 11, 2001. The administration took the goodwill many people felt and perverted it for their own partisan ends (re: Max Cleland) and agenda that had nothing to do with capturing or killing Osama bin Laden (re: Iraq).

So we were on vacation in the Outer Banks in September 2002. A tropical storm blew in and we stayed in our motel room and played Old Maid with the kids and watched TV until the power went out and read books by flashlight and watched the storm. I took my oldest daughter, who was on a Nancy Drew kick at the time, and we practiced watching people in the lobby while pretending to read the newspaper.

The storm blew away a day later than expected. It delayed our trip to Kitty Hawk. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2002, we were at the birthplace of aviation. It gave the visit a poignancy that it wouldn’t have had on any other day. I carried my youngest on my shoulder and my oldest ran in front of me with her arms spread and we ran along the trail where the Wright Brothers flew and landed their craft.

I thought of those mothers and fathers lost on that terrible day who would give anything to have a day like I was having with my girls. So I hugged them even tighter.

Everything else I want to say about Sept. 11, I said in this post.