The Mississippi River shimmered in the morning sunlight as we waited, watching barges float noiselessly downstream.

My 84-year-old mother, Harriet Wilson, and I were starting on the second day of our drive from her home Lawrence to my Atlanta home. Having stopped overnight at St. Genevieve, a mid-18th century French village south of St. Louis, we anticipated crossing the Mississippi to Illinois on a tiny ferry. We could hear a few birds singing, and spotted a blue heron standing motionless in the water. Nothing could have been more serene, more peaceful.

Another 10 minutes brought the low roar of the boat’s motor. The operator motioned us and a pickup to board. A delay while we waited for a stone laden barge to pass allowed me to snap a few pictures. Eyeing the disembarkment ramp, I idly wondered about driving up its steep pitch.

As we reached the bank, the young operator opened the gate, and then approached our car and said, “Are you listening to the news? Planes have just bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon!” Unruffled, my mother smiled at the joke and said, “I’ll bet you say something like that to all your passengers!”

“No, ma’am,” he exclaimed, “Listen to the news!”

Heart pounding, I pulled off and stopped the car, frantically searching for a radio station. Over the next many hours, as we made our way through the blue highways and lush landscapes of southern Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, we slowly absorbed the morning’s events. Still, I experienced shock every time they repeated it, “Four hijacked planes this morning.”

My son came to my mind. Newly back from a summer in Ireland, he had been visiting a friend in Brooklyn for the weekend. Was he still there, or on his way home by a westbound plane? The news that the doomed airplanes were supposedly headed for the West Coast came as a huge relief; Nick lived in Austin.

We continued our drive, through lovely rolling hills and across silver rivers, amidst the hint of autumn in the rusty tints of trees. The radio repeated the awful news, over and over. We listened in fascinated horror, and saw newscasts wherever we stopped for gasoline or food, as Americans and visitors alike, numbly, incredulously, heard one perspective on the attacks after another. I felt overwhelmed with sadness for the victims, for the country, for our world.

We arrived in Atlanta Wednesday afternoon, and found my son had called, leaving a message that he was okay : in Brooklyn! The following day brought his chilling e-mail message, “Ash is falling like snow outside the windows here in Brooklyn:. We stood in Sunset Park and watched the buildings fall : INSANITY!!! I wish I were in Austin.”

It was a far cry from a peaceful morning on the Mississippi.

We had heard a mockingbird there, minutes before our serenity shattered. And nothing on the river changed. Just the whole world.