Where Courage Comes From

Everyone over a certain age has a 9/11 story. Mine is that I was with my wife on a Holland-America Alaskan cruise. We were set to begin our third year of preschool with our daughter Josephine. This was the year that I would be approached by my mentors Chris David and Val Donato to consider becoming a teacher in the North Seattle College cooperative system. I don't need to go into details, but when the news of the terrorist attacks reached us, the ship stopped dead in the water, somewhere off the west coast of Canada, a metaphor for so many things.Our daughter was staying with her grandmother who, wisely, kept the television turned off. My brilliant mother-in-law was inclined to anxiety, so it was probably a blessing for both of them. We returned to find a cheerful and blissfully ignorant four-year-old who had spent those first few days of aftermath, living a cozy, protected life, something of which those of us paying attention to the news had been robbed.Hysteria is the word that…