September 11, 2003

MORNING

I kissed my son on his peach-fuzz head this morning and sent him to his classroom to learn. There isn't a kiss I give him that doesn't feel like the last. I want to remember his warmth and his soft skin and the tender way he tells me goodbye. The little wave he sneaks to me when he thinks no one is looking. The bravery it takes for an 8-year-old boy to leave the most secure thing he knows and to forge his own day. I never want to forget that and I am afraid I will. Because something could happen. At any time or place. And that would be all I have of him and all I would ever have. The memory of how perfectly beautiful he is. How immensely proud I am to be his father. The sense that he is full of promise and love.

And I know that those memories would never be enough to sustain me if something were to happen while he was at school and I was at work.

I know that now more than ever.

Because of Sept. 11.

Posted by Jeff at September 11, 2003 08:51 AM | TrackBack
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