The platform at North Charleston's aging Amtrak station was cast in the blue hue of old florescent lighting which dissipated across four gleaming rails into the humidity of the thinning remnant of a significant Sunday.

Sept. 11 marked ten years. It is unnecessary to say since what. It is important for me to remind myself that my eight-year-old son Jackson stepped off a yellow school bus on I'On Square that day to share a cookie and drink with me outside the Square Onion and learn that something terrible had happened. Since that time, other things have also mattered: chorus performances, sailing lessons, kayaking on the rivers, band, algebra, German, the Wando prom and finally graduation.

Happenstance and dreams had called Jackson to choose Evergreen State College, on the verdant bluffs of Puget Sound in Washington State as the next part of his life's journey, the part you start after you leave Mom and Dad.

Evergreen is a very liberal, open minded place. Its graduates include the man who created the Simpsons, the current head of the National Education Association and Rachael Corey, an activist crushed under a bulldozer in a Gaza protest. Students gather for Ti Chi in the morning. Evergreen is not for everyone. Only time and experience will tell us what it means to Jackson.

Without doubt, however, it is a long way to the Pacific Northwest. Jackson wanted to make a statement with his journey. He decided to take the four day, 3000 mile trip on Amtrak. To make his meaning clear, he decided to start the journey on Sept. 11. Some of his Wando classmates, in response to the same event, have begun a different journey to basic training and service in Afghanistan. This old world of adult problems is the only place our children can begin their lives.

Our nation is broken and divided. My son decided to honor the historic memory of its binding steel and unite it by seeing every mile, sea to shining sea.

The railroad lines of America are old. The climate of our planet is under strain. There is no rain in burning Texas, floods in the interior and hurricanes on the coast. The week before he was to leave more rain fell on the Blue Ridge than its ancient hills had been shaped to drain. The tracks between Richmond and our nation's capital went under water again, drowned by another flood. Freight and passenger traffic along the line, coal for our electricity, raw materials for our factories and the passengers on our limited Amtrak system, came to a halt.

In Washington, our president went to a joint session of congress to propose restoring our nation's decaying infrastructure to create jobs and restore our capacity to compete. It's unlikely the high speed rail line from Hong Kong to Bejing in China goes under water. Most senators and congressmen listened. Jim DeMint stayed in his office, made phone calls and sent out a press release so the nation knew he wasn't there. At least this time Joe Wilson didn't yell "You lie!" Afterwards, financial markets and news people muttered that we had become a nation which could agree on little and do less. On Friday the stock market stumbled again.

In Mount Pleasant, a son of the nation which drove the golden spike at Promontory Point waited to see if the water would drain away less than 50 miles from our nation's capital so he could begin his journey. He was afraid his nation had become too broken to make it possible.

In the dark, muddy woods of Virginia employees of the CSX Railroad waited for the water to fall and cleared the rails when it did. On Saturday night, Amtrak's website informed us that the Silver Meteor would run again. Jackson was too excited to sleep. I tossed and turned with memories and tears. Mother, who believes the world is a better place than I do was roused by our sleeplessness.

On Sunday morning, Jackson took a kayak trip out around the end of Folly Island to the seaward side of Bird Key and bid farewell to the Atlantic. He came home, showered, napped and shared a dinner with family and friends. Finally, there were just the three of us, in the dim light of the platform, waiting when the train arrived, on time.

It has been a long journey to the platform. Jackson was born during the Rodney King / L.A. Riots. His time and the time of his peers has been marked by rising violence and disorder. Their culture sends them a conflicted message of selfishness, passivity and conformity, all wound up in a hurricane of distraction. The old answers do not work. His generation has been warned, threatened and retreated into sardonic detachment. Jackson has often followed the different drummer. On Sunday night, that cadence was calling him away from us.

We grabbed our last hugs. I cried. Jackson pulled on his backpack, presented his ticket and climbed on board. He smiled and waved through the window. The great silver train disappeared into the night.

In the quiet dark left behind, as the distance between us grew, on this Sept. 11, our family hoped for a better tomorrow.

William Hamilton (www.wjhamilton.com) is an attorney who lives in I'On Village.