I pass this goat farm every week. In a small unincorporated community called Golansville. I keep hoping to introduce myself to the owner and ask for permission to take goat portraits. I haven’t had any luck so far. For now, I content myself with an occasional photograph taken from across the road. The goats don’t turn away. They look at me with mild curiosity and then go on about their business.

It was much the same with the dragonfly warming itself in the last of the evening’s sun. On a nearly dried towel on the line. I kept walking closer, expecting the dragonfly to fly away, but it remained still. Nearly as still as me—holding my breath, trying not to shake as I pressed the shutter on the film camera. A single frame left, no room for error.

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work” —Gustave Flaubert

I have my story of this day. September 11, 2001. It’s really not my story at all. It’s our story. But there is my small part—where I was and how I couldn’t let myself feel fear because I had two young kids who needed me. How my husband got home from Washington, DC that day by way of a friend of a friend, first in a convertible jam-packed with panicked federal workers and then in a pick-up truck with more weary passengers. The relief I felt at hearing his voice and feeling his embrace.

I am safe and there is nothing to fear on this evening walk. I tell myself this over and over again.