The Write Life

Christmas Is: an excerpt from “Walking Tall”

Chapter 14: Christmas Is

The days after September 11, 2001, I sat riveted to the images of devastation on my television like the rest of the nation. The thought of flying across the country unnerved me, but when October 17 came, I boarded a plane at LAX with enough clothes to survive autumn in New York and Atlanta, and a December in Cleveland. En route to New York, I stopped in Orlando to drop off my dog, Jack, at my mother’s his a three-month vacation.