On the morning of 9/11 I was sitting in my mother's living room in New York City waiting to hear from her. Someone had called and told me to turn on the television, that on every channel were images of smoke, chaos and people running from a burning building.  My mother had left early that morning to go to one of her union meetings; I had just returned to New York from a visit with my father who was in a hospital in New Jersey. My mother’s meeting was down the street from the World Trade Center. It was this fact that had me intensely watching the screen in case her face appeared. At least that…