“Some amazing footage,” they announce on the morning news, “of a father and son who’d become separated in the chaos following the flood.” A windowless, cinder block building is shown standing in glaring sunlight. “After six weeks of frantic searching the father received word that his seven year-old son was here, living at this temporary shelter in Houston.”

You’re tired of hearing about Katrina, but you blow on your coffee and watch as a tall, broad-shouldered, African-American man enters a bustling gymnasium. The man scans the room and from off-camera comes a cry that is perhaps the most honest, most heartfelt sound you’ve ever heard.

A blur flashes across the bottom of your screen. The father crouches and you actually hear the powerful smack of their reunion above the room’s chatter. Instead of absorbing the child’s momentum by swinging him around, the father took the full impact into his chest. Right, you think, into his heart.

The boy buries his face in his father’s black leather jacket and they bear hug. Then, without a word or a glance back, the man lifts the boy and carries him through the bright rectangle of the open door. They are gone. You will never learn their names, or see this footage again, but you will remember the startling impact of the son running full-speed into his father. What, you wonder, did that kid endure? What did the father endure?