McFreedom

A stupidly small time after 6 o'clock, this morning, my wife and I were lying in bed with our two-year-old son, who had just woken up. I'd retreived him from his crib, but the adults were huddled under blankets, trying to deny that we were, in fact, about to have to get out of bed, already.

I turned on NPR, which was playing "Weekend Edition." They were running a story about the end of recovery efforts at Ground Zero. As many of the stories I heard or read on the event, this one highlighted the ceremonial ringing of the firehouse bell, in four sets of five. It was explained how this was the traditional signal given at every firehouse when a firefighter is killed in action. At the end of the story, they played the twenty bell rings with no other sound.

"Can you hear the bell?" I asked. "Yeah," he replied, with a big smile. "Ding! Ding! `Ding Dong' says a bell!"

The bell stopped. "More!" he requested.

"Well...I hope not," I told him.