September 12th Sunrise

The sound of him shuffling up the stairs was surreal. I didn't know when, and for a few hours, if he was coming home. Such a long and horrific day had passed between us. He stumbled up the stairs much like I had stumbled numbly through my day with our two small children. And yet there he stood. His eyes were blood red, and his body slumped and drained, but he was home.

John wasn't supposed to be home. His orders were to remain in quarters until morning relief. He had uncharacteristically disregarded orders because he needed to be home, if only for an hour. There were no rules for a while after that day, chaos calls for that.

So he sat on the couch after we hugged and cried and told me his story. My "simple kind of man" that night was a poet. He cited all the names of his buddies that died with such reverence and honor. I sat next to him and watched in awe, because to me that day he was almost a ghost.

As always, and September 11th was no exception, John called. The first call came with a flush of relief. I was not a widow. The calls that followed were sometimes just strangers saying, "You're husband is okay, he asked me to call." Angels with cell phones. Later in the day he called, from an undisclosed location, which generously offered free "soft drinks" to all firemen, cops and survivors.

I've often wondered how different John might be had he not come home that night. What horrors might he have held inside? What walls might he have put up? It was all so raw... I needed to see him and he needed to see me... nothing else mattered, nothing else should.

About an hour after John got home we received a call from his officer. He had to report back to the firehouse that night. I was beyond furious. It felt as if we were at the center of a bulls eye and I couldn't bear being alone.

Over the weeks that followed I began to hate the fire department, the city, the country and I just wanted to get out. I didn't need anyone to tell me to prepare a go bag. I had a plan, a bag, our necessary documents and an intense desire to leave Brooklyn for the mainland within days after September 11th. I was a cynical, life long New Yorker, and I sincerely believed we could simply be written off. If anything else should happen, the bridges would be closed and we would be on our own. Two years later I hardly looked back, when we crossed the Hudson River with our three children bound for our new home in the Hudson Valley.

Before John came home that night, while light was still in the sky, I had read to our children before bed. I recall that being of great comfort to me. The mundane was a safe and comfortable place in a shifting and scary world. During the night there was a thunderstorm... it seemed fitting, and somehow cleansing.

To me the sunrise of September 12th was a miracle. The day before everything had fallen apart, the seams had ripped, the veils had torn... and yet the sun, the blessed Sun still rose. That morning I had a visceral understanding of why people worshipped the Sun... and in my heart I felt hope.