story20516.xml

story20516.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2006-09-11

I can't believe it's been 5 years already. My family and I will never ever forget September 11, 2001 because all we have to do is look at our son, Riley. Today is his birthday. He was born at 6:09PM on September 11, 2001. Although I truly went into labor at 3:30AM that morning, we joke that he just didn't want to come out to a world where evil had taken over that day. I know, because I spent four hours trying to push him out but he was insistent on crawling back further up the birth canal.
Riley will always be a sign of hope and blessing to us and hopefully, in the future, to the rest of the world that someone wonderful was born on such a gloomy, evil day. Riley is everything that the terrorists are not: he loves life, he is respectful of life, he's got such an innocence still, and his beautiful eyes show you how deep his soul is.