In Noel Streatfeild’s Skating Shoes, Lalla, a young skater, is supposed to be practicing her brackets on the ice, and becomes angry when her friend and fellow-skater Harriet reminds her. Hearing their argument, and learning that it was about brackets, Nana, Lalla’s nurse, finds it hard to intervene. “Whenever that word was used Nana saw in her mind’s eye some brackets that had been in her home when she was a little girl. They had been made of wood, covered in a pinkish plush, and on each bracket stood photographs of her relatives.”

This week I learned that I know as little about brackets as Nana did when I entered the office March Madness Pool. Knowing virtually nothing about college basketball, I chose my teams using the following rules: 1) If I had ever seen the team play I picked that team. The only college men’s basketball game I have ever attended was a Butler home game, so I picked Butler as the winner of it all. Butler lost last night. 2) If I had never heard of a school I picked them to lose. Valparaiso University didn’t stand a chance. 3) If I had any association with a school either as a student or an employee, I picked them if the association was positive, and chose them to lose if the association was negative. I worked at Harvard for fourteen months and hated it so I chose them to lose. They won in the first round. 4) The last criteria was if I thought I would like to visit the state or city. I’d like to visit Oregon so I picked them.

My brackets have fallen off the wall leaving large holes in the plaster. I have since learned that 1) the numbers next to a team on the bracket chart are not random; they represent the college’s ranking. Who knew? Apparently everyone but me 2) the winning team is the team that wins the game, not the team that wins an election based on popularity.

But I’m not sure I would necessarily change my brackets now that I know more about the way it works. After all the “upsets” I have heard about on the news, maybe there is still hope for a few of my likable states or cities. It was only five dollars to enter and I doubt I would have done better by buying tickets for last night’s Powerball drawing even though the winning ticket was sold in New Jersey. However, I have since learned that Valparaiso, Indiana, was where Orville Redenbacher developed his popcorn, and the town has a popcorn festival each year. I would probably choose them next year. After all, how can you vote against a place that has an Orville Redenbacher monument?

I don’t need bumper stickers or constant replays on television to remind me of the horrors of 9/11.   The evil, fear and panic of that day will stay with me forever.   Instead of sharing where I was when I heard of the terrors, I try to keep in my mind the joy of coming home.    I worked in New York City on that awful day, and wondered how I would get home, as the trains and buses  were not running and all the tunnels were closed.    I waited with what seemed like thousands of others for a ferry, feeling like a refugee headed for a safer land, New Jersey.    After an hour we boarded a ferry across the Hudson River to Weehkawken, where rows of ambulances and fire trucks were waiting to board the ferry in on the return trip.  After a bus to Hoboken, a train to Newark and then a train to Montclair, the first sight on the platform when I stepped off the train was my husband, waiting for me.   As I sobbed into his embrace, I knew that the power of love was greater than any of the evil I had seen that day.   I was home.

In the days that followed, the world gradually started turning again.   I returned to work on Thursday, where we still managed to get out all of the tax returns due September 15, in spite of the fact that we could have taken an extension until December due to the terrorist attacks. On Sunday night, the non-stop television news coverage began to cease, channel by channel.   On ABC, they made the transition by running a special on the life and accomplishments of Walt Disney, a man who brought so much joy and magic and wonder into the world and into our lives as regular visitors of Disneyland and Walt Disney World.   Walt believed in a “bright big beautiful tomorrow” and I began to have hope that his legacy would inspire hope in overcoming the evil of the world.   He also loved and believed in America, had been a veteran, and believed in the best of this country and the world.

Later that week, Disney Vacation Club sent us two pins, American Flags in the shape of the traditional Mickey Ears with a note of sympathy for all those who were lost that day and a simple message: “Please come home.”

The homecomings in those weeks are what I keep in my heart, the power of love over evil, the message of hope, and belief in a better future.