168 seconds of silence
I sing a lullaby to my children. It's a song I wrote in 1989, before I was even married, but it's a song I knew I was going to sing to my children someday. On April 19, 1995, I was singing it to my then-9-month-old daughter, trying to gently persuade her to take her afternoon nap. A line in the song goes: "I hope that you will understand/This old world isn't really that bad ... "

On that line, I clutched, hard. Tried not to join the little girl in crying myself. Shielded her eyes, even though I knew she wouldn't be affected anyway, from the television, which was showing images of dust-covered people and rescue workers and frantic parents in a place called Oklahoma City. I was trying to convince my little girl that the world wasn't really that bad, when all of a sudden, I wasn't so sure myself.

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Five years later, we were living in Texas. My daughter, not yet 6, asked me about the bad men who blew up the children in Oklahoma City.

I replied with something really intelligent, something along the lines of, "What?"

My daughter told me that her friend across the street was back from a weekend visiting her grandparents in Oklahoma City. Her friend had told her that bad men had blown up children in Oklahoma City a few years ago. My daughter wanted to know why.

I thought I was several years and a few history books away from having to explain this. Apparently, I wasn't. I went over several options in my head for about 12 seconds, and finally settled on the barest of details. Told her that 168 people died in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, because a man was mad at the government. I told her the man may or may not have known there was a day-care center in the building, but 19 children died. I told her the government caught the man, and that soon the man would be put to death himself for his crime.

The wheels were turning in her mind. She thought about it for a second, and she said, "I know what I'd do if there was a bad man coming to blow up a building. I'd look for an "EXIT" sign, and I'd go out the door, and I'd find a policeman and tell him. That's what I would do."

I think she was trying to make me feel better. I was glad, because I didn't know how I was going to make her feel better.

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A few weeks after that, the rest of the family was gone on a family trip. I had to work, so I stayed behind, with the house and a Sunday to myself. Doing what I used to do when I was alone and bored, I got in the car and started driving with no destination in mind.

A few hours and several twisty back roads later, I found myself in Oklahoma City. It was April 2000, the weekend after the Oklahoma City National Memorial opened. I don't know why I was drawn there, but I was.

I found a parking space in the Sunday-afternoon downtown and walked to the site. I took off my hat as I walked on the ground where the Murrah Building had stood. The 168 chairs -- 19 of them in a smaller size -- were lined up along the long side of a rectangular reflecting pool.

The news media had already been and gone. A few people were somberly walking through the chairs, obviously looking for specific ones. I went to the chairs and looked for Baylee Almon's. It wasn't hard to find. It was decorated with stuffed animals and toys that would have been age-appropriate for a girl who was born three months before my daughter, a girl that would have turned 6 the week before.

I walked around the reflecting pool to the Survivor Tree, an elm that withstood the blast. Young children were climbing the tree while their parents stood by. I saw the instructions for firefighters and rescue people that had been spray-painted on the wall of the damaged building next door, damage which hasn't been repaired and probably never will be. I saw the inscription; I don't remember exactly what it says, but it was something along the lines of, "God will forgive, but we will not forget."

Then, the children's memorial. Drawings by children from all over the United States. Drawings acknowledging the heroic work of the rescuers and the pain and suffering the parents and brothers and sisters felt.

I was there for about an hour. I walked back to my car just as rain started to drip from the clear blue sky. I got in my car and pointed it south, toward home. About five miles out of OKC, the skies opened in a torrential mid-spring downpour.

Then, about 10 minutes later, spanning all four lanes of Interstate 35 south of Norman, Okla., a rainbow. Just as clear and as beautiful as you could imagine.

The sight jolted me out of my mourning for people I would never know. And I was reminded: This old world isn't really that bad.