The Subtle Changes Since 9/11

And so Lovell will zip along the Herndon Parkway and near Dulles International Airport, where five of the Sept. 11 hijackers boarded the American Airlines flight that hit the Pentagon. She'll see a plane and wonder, What would I do if it slammed into the cars?

She'll pass a big field of weather satellite dishes to the right and think, "No, the plane wouldn't land there because there are no humans," she said. Then she'll look to the field on the left where houses are going up and consider how much easier her commute would be if she moved there, until she thinks, "No . . . those guys got on those planes right down the street. Right at Dulles."

"It enters my head," Lovell said. "And I stop myself, because I could go on."

She sipped her tea and pulled her daughter into her lap while her husband, John, tapped an order for pizza into the computer.

"Definitely, over time I've thought about it less and less," John Lovell said, referring to Sept. 11.

For him, all the nervousness and anxiety faded away at some point that he cannot identify. What's left is something perhaps more permanent, more intellectual than emotional.

For one, he does not want to work in the District again. He has accepted the possibility of a terrorist attack as a cold, hard fact. And in the past five years, he has found himself more interested in learning about the rest of the world.

Immediately after Sept. 11, he recalled, he was shocked to hear that there were people who felt the United States somehow had brought the attacks upon itself. "I remember getting angry and thinking, How could they possibly think that?" he said. "But then that enabled me to start digging deeper."

So he began paying more attention to the news, talking more to his wife's family, which is Iranian, and now finds himself to be "the voice of reason" as he debates Middle East policy with friends.

"I just don't assume that a perspective from the Middle East is the wrong perspective," said Lovell, who was raised in a conservative family in a small Virginia town and works for Fannie Mae in Bethesda. "I try to take a look and understand it."

"He's a lot more calm than me," said his wife, who decided she would take a walk after all.

She headed across the street to meet her friend Nicole, who was outside talking with a few neighbors.