The first hours of September 11, 2001 brought the kind of crisp Manhattan morning that signals fall has finally arrived after a scorching summer. It was a bright blue morning with a chill in the air, and not a single cloud in the sky. News coverage would return again and again to just how blue and cloudless it had been. It was as though the weather being perfect added insult to injury when black smoke started billowing out across the eastern seaboard. “But the weather was so beautiful” was like saying, after someone dies, “But I just saw him last week!” It became a key detail in my memory of how horrible that day was. I was in Sarasota, Florida at the time, but my brother was in New York City, and we weren’t sure if he was safe. My parents worried we might be attacked, too, since President George W. Bush was in our city reading The Pet Goatto elementary school students. As the decades passed, I thought of 9/11 on cloudless, cool days. Eventually, this memory contorted into my favorite joke. When it’s a day without a cloud in the sky, I always call my brother and say “Man, it is just 9/11 beautiful outside today.” He laughs every time.

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