But then he got an e-mail, and suddenly the terrorists had struck much closer to home. The message was from Mr. Tammeus' sister. Her 31-year-old son, Karleton D.B. Fyfe, had been on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center.

And so, Mr. Tammeus' column became much more personal than he had intended.

''We all pray it isn't true, but whether it was my nephew or someone else's nephew or son or daughter, the response must be the same,'' he wrote in Tuesday's extra edition of The Kansas City Star. ''We must seek complete justice even as we hold each other up and become for one another the channels of grace and the deep wells from which we will need to draw comfort.''

In a few shocking moments last week, Americans regained something that they lost long ago - the sense that they were one nation, indivisible.

At 8:46 a.m. Thursday, precisely two days after the first strike, the church bells of Athens, Ga., chimed.

''Today, we are all New Yorkers,'' said the city's mayor, Doc Eldridge.

No one stopped to wonder at hearing those words from a politician in the Deep South - perhaps because it seemed to be true. Everyone, no matter how far from ground zero, seemed to know someone who knew someone among the dead or missing or survivors, or those who were lucky enough to switch a flight or a meeting, and thus they lived.

This was certainly true in Washingtonville, N.Y., 60 miles north of New York City, home to many city police officers and firefighters. As soon as she heard what had happened, Donna Turner sent her family's funeral clothes out to the dry cleaners.

''I know when the list of names comes out we're going to be attending a lot of funerals,'' she said. ''I can't even begin to say how many people I know down there.''

But even if you didn't know a victim - even if you had little involvement with the outside world - there was no escaping this catastrophe. In Mesopotamia, Ohio, some of the Amish went to neighbors' homes to watch the reports on television.

As word of the disaster spread, so did its secondary effects, not all of them good.

The backlash against Arabs and Muslims emerged, although not yet with real virulence. A man rammed his car into the Islamic Center of Evansville, Ind., early Friday; at the University of California at Berkeley, someone spat at members of Students for Justice in Palestine.

Others were determined to stop the hatred. Two people sent flowers to the Islamic Center in Lawrence, Kan., with an apology ''for narrow-minded people who might do bad things.''

Some irritability could be blamed on the security measures that were suddenly imposed on an American public used to unfettered freedom.

Two F-16 fighter jets from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland forced a single-engine plane flown by Wayne Beall, of Annapolis, Md., to land after it violated a nationwide ban on private flying. Mr. Beall had been stuck in Festus, Mo., since Tuesday.

''He just wanted to go home,'' said Festus Police Chief Tim Lewis.

But the nation's grounding had other effects. For days, no planes sprayed insecticide in Ouachita Parish, La., to fight encephalitis. For days, no planes dropped fish-scented rabies vaccine for raccoons in West Virginia.

The effects of terrorism were that unpredictable, that disparate.

They could be seen in the conundrum of transit officials around New York, left with 1,000 cars parked in train station lots since Tuesday. Their owners may never return for them.

Mostly, they could be seen in the things we chose to do, and the things we did not.

The Association of Trial Lawyers of America urged its members to hold off filing lawsuits in connection with the terrorist attacks - a true first.

And then there was Jeffery Eugene Tucker, who was supposed to die Tuesday, but did not.

Mr. Tucker was sentenced to death for the murder of Wilton Humphreys 13 years ago. Mr. Tucker says he's ready to die.

But because of the disarray in the courts after the terrorists' onslaught, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Mr. Tucker could not be assured all the appeals he was due. So he gave him a 30-day reprieve.

Because thousands died, Jeffery Tucker lives.