It is a spectacular morning here in my small garden. The air is cool but will likely warm up as the sun is full and bright in a cloudless blue sky. This day three years ago was a Tuesday. It was an equally stunning day. The kind of day you walk from the parking lot to your office building thinking it was a crime against nature to spend it indoors. Worse, in a gray, sterile office environment.

We had no tv obviously and jostled for elbow room around the computer as we would when someone had a funny video clip to share although there was no laughter that Tuesday and there was only a sense of absolute confusion. What was happening? How could we be witnessing horror while everything around us was so mundanely normal--standing in our work clothes in a cluster of cubicles drinking bad coffee from white, styrofoam cups?

I wasn't drinking anything. I could hardly swallow. Both of my brothers lived and worked in Manhattan.

As I ran back into the parking lot to get back into my car to go home where I could get information from my tv and call my family, the sky was still that perplexing bright blue and the sun continued to stream down brilliantly in a beautiful, beautiful day. Somehow the beauty of the day made everything harder to comprehend, harder to fathom.

Both of my brothers were safe. But my sister's next door neighbor in her Boston suburb was killed that day; he was a passenger on the plane that crashed into the first tower. He left behind his wife and two young sons.

The first leaves from the maple trees in our yard have begun to change color and drop to the ground. They probably were beginning to drop that day three years ago, but I wouldn't know since I wasn't paying attention.

Life events change us in different ways. Since that day 3 years ago, I find that I pay attention to the details of each day in a way that I never did before. It's as if I'm more awake, more alive in each moment of the day. I have a constant sense of gratitude for all that I did not lose on that day and an aching heart for those whose lives were destroyed.

Today, most of all.

got 2 cents?