As I write this while working from home on Sept. 8, it is a warm, sunny, perfect late-summer day. Almost too warm. Almost too perfect. It’s hard to believe that autumn, followed quickly by winter, will be here before I know it.

On Sept. 11, 2001, my circumstances were different: I was living in a different home, had a different job, was “almost” engaged to a different man, had different dogs… One thing was the same: it was a warm, sunny, perfect late-summer day and I was working from home. Life could not have been sweeter.