Read an Excerpt
From the Introduction
–
Although my kids and I didn’t climb into the van and drive off until nine
months later, our 12,000-mile American road odyssey began on September 11,
2001.
Where I was and what I was doing when the planes ripped through New York
are part of my life’s fabric. I was
outside painting the fence brown, telling my neighbor Donna that I’d plenty of
time now to do the job my 13-year-old son was supposed to have finished because
I’d just been laid off. We groused
about the economy’s sorry state and mused over whether things could get any
worse.
In the next instant,
they did. The kitchen phone
rang. It was my husband calling
from the car to tell me one of the twin towers had been hit. Mike was on the road, making sales
calls, and hadn’t seen any pictures yet.
He’d only heard the radio reports.
The paintbrush
hardened outside in the sun, pieces of cut grass sticking up like spikes in the
brown mess.
When Adam and Dana came home from school, we
gathered around the table on the deck, and began, as a family, to sort through
facts and feelings and fears. The
kids’ teachers had done a good job dispensing comfort and assurance before
sending them home. By the time they
got to us, we’d decided we had three things to communicate: they were safe and
loved; America was strong; the world’s people were
good.
To our family, this
last point was as important as the others, because our kids have been traveling
the world since they were babies.
Respect for the world’s people is part of their upbringing. This is a gift, and we’d allow no
senseless act, however brutal, nor any retaliatory distrust or intolerance, to
steal it.
My mind’s eye called up images: two Turkish teenagers kicking a soccer
ball with a 5-year-old Adam on the grounds of Topkapi Palace; Adam joining a
group of Bolivian boys in tabletop foosball during recess at Copacabana’s
school, Lake Titicaca shining at the end of the street; the kids building sand
castles with Javier and Daniel, two Belizean brothers who’d pass our hotel each
day on their way to class; Dana setting off for a bird walk, in the shadow of
Kilimanjaro, with Mike and Masai chief Zapati. These experiences enrich life and must
continue.
As the painful,
numbing slowness of the weeks immediately after September 11 yielded
to something approximating normalcy, I regained enough focus to give the future
some thought. That future had us
traveling again, but this time, we’d get to know our America.
