It's my story...just one of many accounts of last week.

Last Tuesday morning was very scary. I had dropped my son off at preschool and was running some errands when I heard the news of the two planes on the car radio.

I had noticed that the bridge was closed in the direction of New York, andlater found out they had closed all the bridges and tunnels. We live beside the bridge to Staten Island, one of the boroughs of New York City.

When I realized what had happened, I really didn't know for sure if Rick was OK. He had probably changed trains under the World Trade Center before 9 am, before the first tower was hit. But commuting into New York is erratic at
the best of times. I tried to call his cellphone but cellphones weren't working. I was fairly certain that he would be fine, as long as he was underground, and had left the area before the first building collapsed.

He was attending a course this past week. The material on the morning of September 11th was totally redundant for him. He'd said he might skip it and go in later. He works really long hours and rarely gets a chance to take a little time off. I knew he had gone up to the observation deck at the World Trade Centre in late spring to reminisce about the past two years working on Wall St., now that his office was moving to Park Avenue (in midtown). I kept hearing the TV weatherman that morning saying it was a beautiful clear day to go up to the top of the World Trade Towers...

Avoiding the highway, I went back to Eric's school, took him home andchecked the voicemail. There was a message from Rick saying he was OK. But for Awhile...God it was awful.

It's kind of eerie here now. A lot more quiet. We live under the flight path to Newark airport, one of the busiest in the world. There used to be a jet going overhead about every couple of minutes. Then for days there were only military helicopters and fighter planes. And we can still see the smoke from New York City.

The events of one week ago seem to be distilling into a different realityfor all of us, and every day Rick and I have more stories to share with each other from those we meet in our daily lives. There must be millions of them...if what we're hearing is any indication.

On Saturday evening we went to a pier in Jersey City just across the Hudson River from the World Trade Centre. We both needed to see it for ourselves, to make the unbelievable reality of it sink in a little faster and to send a
prayer to those still trapped in the rubble and to the rescue workers risking their lives at that moment in the hopes of finding them. Even though the smoke trail is visible from a great distance, as we go closer, what we saw seemed more and more incredible. The thick gray plumerose steadily upward and out over New York Harbor, an airforce helicoptercircling above. Blue strobe lights flashed from Coast Guard vessels on the water. More strobe lights on top of the bridges. Yet it was very quiet. The sun was setting and reflected gold from several glass faced buildings,
buildings that would have seemed an insignificant part of the skyline before. Lost in thought, I suddenly noticed thousands of buildings in the city were twinkling, and that a brilliant diffusion of white light filtered up from the crash scene. It looked delicate and other-worldly...

On our way back a mobile news camera operator looked haggard. He said he has two sons in their twenties and is worried about the draft. He'd been there all week and when he first arrived he'd talked to an Army Core of Engineers employee at their base of operations next door.

The man had been at the water's edge watching the scene after Tower One washit. He said that a second jet flying low, had abruptly turned just in fron of him, and that when it accelerated toward the city, he knew, and felt so helpless, being unable to do anything but watch it rocket toward the second tower.

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