This is what I have learned since Sept. 11: Armageddon is personal. A terrorist doesn't have to kill you for you to be dead. Bombs and smallpox and anthrax and toxins are the headliners. But in the small print on the back pages where most of us live our lives, and often in no print at all but in the whispers and tears of family and friends, there are countless private tragedies that deal as deadly a blow…

You never think, when you are young and writing down words in a baby book, that someday these words will mean so much. That the height and weight of a baby at three and six and nine months will be numbers that matter. That all the "firsts" - “Sleeps through the night,” “Takes her first steps,” “Says his first words,” - will some day be both…

So, we've been walking, walking, walking. Every day. Around in circles. We could be a children's book: "Two Crazy Ladies.”

See the crazy ladies. See the crazy ladies take off their comfy slippers…

If they had landed safely, it would have been just another mission. We wouldn't know their names. We wouldn't be reading about their histories and their families and the lives they lived and the things they did and were planning to do…