I dressed my children, my 7-year-old son and his 4-year-old twin brother and sister, for school that had just restarted. Lunches were packed, backpacks stuffed, hair combed and teeth brushed.
We walked the two blocks to the school complex under dazzling blue skies, so clear that they looked unreal. Then I came back home to take a nap before heading in to work. It was my normal routine.
Then the phone rang. It was my mother. “I think you need to get to work. Something just hit the World Trade Center,” she said. I was The New York Times’ graphics director at the time.