Breathe after burning

The nightmare is over and I am back safe at home. I was there for all of it: in DC when the Pentagon was attacked, across the river from Manhattan on September 12 with the still-burning remnants of the Twin Towers -- like ghost limbs after an amputation -- filling the air with smoke, at Logan Airport in Boston in a situation of utter panic and confusion in one of the first flights to take off from that unhappy terminal.

Right now, something as self-centered and frivolous as a facelift seems like a sugar-coated compensation pill. I tried calling Dr. Delos’s office several times today but the line was always busy. So I faxed them, proposing the date of Wednesday Oct. 24, as I expected to be on the Cote d’Azur for a trade fair the third week of October. You have to keep going. You have no choice.