On 9/11/2001, I was living in Tampa, Florida, happily planning for my second daughter's arrival the upcoming December, being 7 months pregnant. A normally avid news viewer, I had avoided watching TV that morning, ironically, because I didn't want to be depressed by the news. I headed off with my then two year old to get our car serviced. Upon arrival, we found the entire waiting room and most of the dealership employees standing around the television watching one of the Trade Center buildings billowing with smoke. I asked what was going on at the Trade Center. I'll never forget the tall black man behind me in line looking at me and saying "I believe we're at war."

My sense of shock about the reality of the situation continued all morning and when I got back home, I sat on the porch, looking at the cloudless, blue sky, wondering if planes, bombs or something else, would be falling. "What will happen to my baby?" I remember thinking. Little did I know that her world would be shaped by nothing but war from that day forward and that our family's world would not get brighter, but dimmer, through personal losses and financial woes brought on by the war and the resulting economy. Our personal freedom and privacy have been slipping away these last seven years. I can only hope that the world will soon become a better place for my now thriving first grader, born that same year as the terrible events of 9/11. Now, I sit crying, as I do every year, when I remember all those victims of senseless crime, especially the children who lost their lives, as my child's was beginning. My wish is that the next 7 years bring peace and hope to us all.