Sweet Pea looked a bit dizzy, wobbly on her feet that morning.

Maybe she has an infection, Ayla Abbassi thought. The Abbassi family has a menagerie of barnyard animals around their suburban home in Ballwin, Missouri. They share a four-acre, wooded lot with two dogs, two cats, three ducks and 12 chickens -- including Sweet Pea, a 4-month-old silkie bantam.

Ayla moved Sweet Pea indoors once she got sick. By the third day, the chick's back wings were splitting and her legs were buckling under her weight. Abbassi, who works as an IT project manager, called around to find a vet who treated chickens.

She took her to the nearby Family Pet Hospital. Dr. Hallie Feagans called her later that day and said that the chicken likely had Marek's disease, a common viral disease affecting poultry.

Backyard chickens have become increasingly popular pets. Feagans raises 30 chickens herself, and sees about one or two a week at the hospital. They can be difficult to diagnose and treat. While there's no cure for Marek's disease, which causes paralysis, Feagans said Sweet Pea could still possibly pull through after three or four weeks. Some chickens survive the illness.

"It depends how much work you want to put into it," Feagans told Ayla. "She still has a chance."

That was enough for Ayla. She picked up Sweet Pea and took her home to her three daughters.

"I wanted my girls to feel and see compassion," she said. She told them that one day it could be their parents who were really dependent and helpless. "You need to practice being compassionate whenever the situation presents itself -- no matter how small."

For the next two and a half weeks, Ayla or her daughters massaged Sweet Pea's legs twice a day. Ayla did water therapy daily in the bathroom sink with the chicken, trying to help her build strength in her legs. She fashioned a chicken diaper out of a sock and sanitary napkin Sweet Pea could wear while she scooted around the house. They made a sling out of a plastic grocery bag to help her "walk" upright with some assistance. Her 6-year-old daughter, Zayna, read stories to Sweet Pea nightly and carted her around in a pink-trimmed baby-doll stroller.

Sweet Pea got playtime with her fowl friends every evening.

The chicken basked in the attention.

Ayla felt a little overwhelmed by the amount of care the sick chick needed, in addition to her life as a busy working parent. Her co-workers inquired about the status of her ailing chicken daily.

People go to extraordinary lengths regularly to care for their pets and possibly extend their lives. Not many would go to such trouble for an animal you can buy for $1.50 a pound at the grocery store and serve for dinner. But when raised as pets, chickens can have distinct personalities, and the Abbassis described Sweet Pea as small but mighty.

Despite the nurturing care, Sweet Pea wasn't improving. In fact, she was getting worse and her breathing had become labored. Ayla took her back to the vet. In her heart, she knew she was not going to see Sweet Pea again.

"I remember holding her in the office and saying, 'Goodbye, my darling. I'm sorry I failed you,'" she said.

The assistant at the vet's office told her not to say that -- "You worked so hard," she told her.

Ayla cried the entire way home and waited for news.

Feagans called her later that afternoon. The chicken was showing signs of respiratory struggles. She was on oxygen at the hospital.

"What would you do if you were in my shoes?" Ayla asked the vet.

There was a long pause.

"Ayla, I would let her go. I don't think she will get better."

Sweet Pea died on Aug. 18. She had lived for about a month after she got sick.

The vet didn't charge for the medicine, the last appointment or Sweet Pea's cremation, even though Abbassi insisted that she wanted to pay. Feagans refused to charge her.

"I know she worked really, really hard to save that little thing," Feagans said.

A few days later, instead of a bill, a handwritten card arrived in the mail. Feagans wrote a note thanking the Abbassis for the love and compassion they had provided Sweet Pea.

"She was very lucky to be part of a such a loving family," she wrote. "I wish every pet was treated as well and given as many chances as Sweet Pea was."

Ayla said Feagans made her feel that Sweet Pea was a lot more important than "just a chicken."

And, to them, she was.

Rose and Andy Bingham didn't have much of a wedding.

They took off to Vegas one summer and got married in front of two paid witnesses. They're not ones to celebrate anniversaries, either. One of them might remember a few days later, but there's always too much going on to make much of a fuss. The St. Louis-area couple have been busy raising their four children, along with a few they've taken in over the years. Their grandson also lives with them now.

For much of her life, Rose, 52, has been the one who takes care of people. She worked as an oncology nurse for 25 years, tending to cancer patients and their families; Andy teaches social studies.

About nine years ago, she had an excruciating headache. Her husband asked if he should call 911.

"Yes, call 911," she said. "I'm dying."

In fact, an artery had burst in her brain. It was a random incident that required surgery and left her in a coma for three weeks. When she woke up, she was almost completely blind. She had another surgery, and remembers putting on her glasses, starting to cry and shouting, "I can read!" The aneurysm left her balance a bit off, but Rose returned to work.

A year after her first surgery, she needed a cerebral bypass. She had a stroke during that surgery, but after rehab, she went back to work. Not long after that, increased dizziness and vomiting led doctors to suspect more brain problems. She had another surgery in January 2011 to drain the fluid around her brain stem, and woke up paralyzed from the neck down.

She recalled being in rehab and asking her doctor if she would be walking by the end of the year.

"I was just floored when he told me it was permanent."

She felt gut-punched. "I walked fast, everywhere. Now I'm in a chair," she said. "I was a tall 5'9"; now I'm 4 feet."

A life-changing injury changes more than the individual's life. It changes the lives of everyone else around them.

When we become parents, we're constant caretakers. It's hard to imagine we could be the ones needing help, especially in the prime of our lives.

One of Rose's sons, who is 24, lives with them and helps Andy take care of her. Some of their son's friends who had lived with them helped, as well. Rose says she probably hasn't been very gracious about going from being a caregiver to needing a caretaker. Nurses are in the habit of giving. There have been times when she struggled with deep depression. But most of the time, she considers herself lucky.

"My life is certainly better than a lot of people's," she said recently.

The nurses she worked with have stood by her. They bring snacks to their regular get-togethers, tell stories and laugh like lifelong friends.

"Rose is still Rose," one of them said.

Earlier this year, Rose confided a secret wish to her friends. This summer was going to be her and Andy's 25th wedding anniversary, and she wanted to renew their vows. Would they help her?

Her friends started making lists. One of them volunteered her backyard garden for the ceremony. They divided up the food. They made invitations. Someone ordered a cake; someone else got champagne. A spouse offered to play his guitar, and another offered to take photos. Someone hired a makeup artist.

Rose bought a $77 wedding dress online.

"I wanted my husband to think I was beautiful so that he would remember why he married me," she said, thinking of all the unglamourous daily tasks he does for her. "I wanted him to look at me as his wife again. Not as his patient."

Worried about standing long enough to say her vows, Rose worked on her strength in physical therapy, but still can only stand for a few minutes with her walker. When the celebration on June 25 arrived, Andy chose to sit in a chair. He wanted to look into her eyes while he read the vows he had written.

"The struggles we have had could do one of two things to a couple: push them apart or bring them closer together. And in our case, it has bonded us together for life," Andy said. "... Being with you has taught me the meaning of true love, responsibility and commitment ... You have held this family together for the past 25 years, and we will always need the love and support that you give us all ... I renew my vows to you, pledging my undying love to you, and ready to embark on the next 25 years of our journey together."

The party was a few days after their real anniversary, but it's a day neither will ever forget.

Fifteen years ago, everything changed.

We witnessed the worst terrorist attack on American soil -- live, on television. All of it seemed unreal; events we had never imagined.

That morning I tried to call my relatives who worked in the Twin Towers to see if they had escaped the destruction.

All circuits were busy. I kept hearing that recording.

The horror and fear of that day and the days that followed remains vivid. The stories and images of those who died, the heroes who saved others, the families who lost so much, set against a backdrop of tears and anger. As an American Muslim, or anyone perceived to be, there was the added trauma of feeling displaced, under suspicion, or worse, attacked, in her own country. In the middle of that fragility, there was also a sense of coming together. There was a unity in politics and within our communities that many of us had not experienced before.

The current generation of parents raising young children didn't live through the Vietnam War or the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was Sept. 11 that changed us, and our country.

The aftermath led us into a terrible, prolonged war in Iraq. We sacrificed freedoms, a sacrifice lured by the promise of greater security. We turned a blind eye to human rights violations we scorn in other countries because we were told it was necessary to protect the nation.

Our children, born after those attacks, have never known what America was like before them.

By the end of this year, there will be about 60 million children, about eight times the population of New York, born in America since 9/11.

The oldest of these post-9/11 children are in high school, and more acutely aware of the political world around them, especially in this reality show of an election season.

How can they know the extent of everything that changed, all that was lost?

The post-9/11 children seem more jaded. The internet has exposed them to everything too early. They've watched videos of that day in classrooms. Maybe they didn't have a loss of innocence moment like we did, because when did they get to be innocents? Their generation's defining moment could have been the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. It wasn't the first school shooting, nor was it the worst, but the victims were so young. Adam Lanza, 20, murdered 20 six- and seven-year-olds -- first graders -- and six teachers. But unlike the seismic shift in priorities after the terrorists attacked, nothing changed after scores of school shootings. Well, we conditioned our children to be more vigilant and more afraid. We've taught them to always be on alert -- for school intruders, for online predators, for the next terrorist attack.

They've never known a nation at peace. They're growing up in an endless war on terror.

I asked my middle schoolers how they imagined the country was different before 9/11.

"Maybe there was less security," the younger one said, who spent much of the fourth grade worried about ISIS. The eighth grader wondered if there was less Islamophobia before.

They read the paper. Their generation has heard the rhetoric. They know how divided the country feels. They have their friends and schools and activities and typical adolescent pressures. But they experience it all within a chronic haze of anxiety that is our national landscape.

What a time to grow up.

Every year on this day, I remember the victims of those attacks and all the other losses that followed from those moments.

I mourn the lives lost and this seemingly endless state of war. I think of those who exploit national tragedies to tear us apart or to gain power or profit.

I mourn the country my children never knew.