You can't really get through this day without thinking about where you were and what happened seven years ago. We were on the West Coast back then, living in San Diego and Callum had just turned two. My friend Sarah, who was then home with her own daughter, called us as we were starting our day to say, "Turn on the news. I think something really weird is happening in New York City." Do you remember how long it took to figure out what was actually going on? Callum was in a swim class on Tuesdays and Thursdays back then, and as we drove to Pacific Beach on eerily empty freeways, I listened to report after report, fearing that a wave of horrific violence was washing across the entire country. That the next report would come from Memphis and then Chicago and then Denver all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Thank God that didn't happen. What did happen was awful enough.

That was the first time the battery on my cordless phone actually died. That was when I started listening to NPR. I was a doula back then and had a client due to deliver any day. Her husband was Middle Eastern, and when we did go to the hospital a few days later, as more and more information was trickling in about how this had happened to our country, I actually worried about the reception we'd receive. I needn't have worried. Because time marches on and life is precious and what a beautiful respite it was to leave the leave the tv and the radio behind and focus on nothing more than bringing a tiny baby into the world. For a little while at least the whole world was this hospital room and helping this mother and welcoming her baby.

There is very little more exhilariting than bearing witness to the miracle of birth, even if you've been awake for 24 solid hours to watch it happen. I would always stay with the mother and father for about an hour or so after the baby was born, to get them settled in and help where they'd need it. By then, they are always ready to be alone, to revel in the seismic shift their lives have just made. It was daylight, morning, when I walked back to my car, and it had been full dark when we first arrived. I had that familiar gritty feeling of having been up all night, and the sunlight was almost a shock. A new day. When I turned my car on, there was NPR and Morning Edition, my faithful companions over the last days. But back in that hospital there was a new family, and not just my new family, but many couples welcoming their babies. Families for whom the world was not only buildings and planes and fires and terror, but awe and wonder at the miracle, the newness. Awe and wonder at tiny feet and squashed noses and shocks of hair and blue-gray eyes. I turned NPR off and drove home in silence. It was a new day.