CLEVELAND -- Only the Lions, on a day when football was supposed to inspire, could leave their fans throwing up.Holy Retread, Sports Fans! The second "start" of the season was worse than the first.Endless penalties, porous defense and the coup de grace, a passing game that made up for its two interceptions in the season opener."We can do better," the Lions vowed.They did. This time they threw seven.
The trip began in the foggy mist of Sunday morning, when traffic was light as drips from a faucet.I had a computer bag in one hand and a large cup of coffee in the other. Settling into the back seat, I took a long sip and looked out the window.There were four of us in this silver van, heading to an NFL game in Cleveland: Gene, the sports editor of the Free Press; Bob, one of our copy editors (and a native of Ohio who still lives and dies with the Browns); Justin, a WJR radio producer, and me.I swigged more coffee. The van lurched forward.
That our flag was still there through the gloom and despair hanging on porches, flapping in schoolyards painted on cheeks of young mothers whose husbands are leaving to face the rockets' red glare, bombs bursting in air and our flag is still there
My parents were in Australia last week when the world went crazy. They called my home upon hearing the awful news that four planes had been hijacked by terrorists, and two had been crashed into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and one in a field in Pennsylvania.When I returned their call, the Australian hotel receptionist said they were out. He asked whether there was a message."Yes," I said, "tell them Mitch, their son, is fine, and all the people we know in New York are OK."
The new war began with pictures of smoke, mushrooming smoke, billowing clouds of smoke, smoke that rose above the busiest skyline in the busiest city in the busiest nation in the world, yellow smoke and white smoke and a deathly shade of gray smoke. Smoke filled with jet fuel, with the debris of airplanes, with the shattered glass of two of the tallest buildings in the world, with the charred flesh of victims, smoke filled with what used to be a uniquely American attitude, one that said, "We are safe here, we are the biggest, the richest, the proudest, so we are the most secure."
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
