Life must go on, but our minds lock on Sept. 11.(Chicago Tribune)

CHICAGO _ As she pulled out of her driveway, Susan Grace of Flossmoor, Ill., knew there was a car parked behind her, though it flitted from her mind until she heard the unmistakable crunch of metal on metal.

"I saw it. I knew it was there . . . but I was thinking of other things," said Grace, an occupational therapist, who had to tell her cleaning lady, sheepishly, that she had bashed squarely into her fender. "I'm at a loss to explain how it happened."

Weeks after the worst terrorist attack in American history, many people are plagued by a similar lack of focus. The nation's official mourning period may be over and flags are flying atop poles, but powers of concentration stubbornly remain at half-staff, many say.

Even insulated by hundreds of miles and spared personal loss, employees -- from offices to orchestra pits -- continue to be distracted, disoriented and, above all, sleepless.

"It's not something I can put my finger on . . . it's more like zoning out," said Ben Mollin, owner of the Bossa Nova hair salon in Lansing, Ill. Since Sept. 11, his lapses have been minor--mostly limited to blow-drying one half of a scalp and neglecting to do the other. "Luckily, nothing that involved chemicals."

Such inattentiveness hasn't resulted in the kind of trauma that brings people to emergency rooms -- in fact, ER visits have decreased since the tragedy -- but it has surfaced in more nagging ways: Lost wallets, missed meetings, the inability to tally a column of figures.

"I haven't been on top of my game," concedes one physician.