PARENTING October 22, 2001 Issue

A good picture

By Elizabeth Richards

"I want a good picture of the towers, Mommy, not a bad picture."

This is what my eight-year-old daughter Dilly asked for the night of September 11. She didn't ask me to explain the attack, to tell her why people would plan and carry out such a terrible thing against other people, to assure her that she was safe. She simply wanted an image of the World Trade Center intact, the New York skyline the same, our world unaltered.

I promised her I'd go in search of a postcard the next day on my lunch hour.

About the author

Elizabeth Richards is a high school English teacher in New York City, a single mother of two daughters, and the author of two novels, Every Day (Simon and Schuster, 1997) and Rescue (Simon and Schuster, 1999).

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