Seven

I didn't remember, at first, that it was the anniversary of 9/11. September 11, I thought; the Discover payment is due today. September 11, in between the birth of Mary and the feast of St. John Chrysostom.

Then it hit me.

At breakfast I reminded the boys, and together we prayed for the dead and for the survivors. One of them asked me to tell about the firefighters. For weeks after 9/11 I couldn't think about the firefighters without tears: all of them pelting up those stairs in their gear, going bravely, willingly, to horrible deaths. It took me a few tries to get through the story this morning, but I was glad they wanted to hear it.

In 2001 I had been looking forward to September 11th, because I was waiting to see if I was pregnant. In late August, my oldest son had prayed, "Dear God, please send us a baby sister," and I suspected that God had granted his request. (Or at least part of it. The sister part would take longer than the baby part.) Along with the news of devastation in New York, the 11th brought our family tidings of new life. I spent the day thinking, "What a crazy world to bring a baby into. What a crazy world."

We walked to the library that day, under beautiful skies that were ominously empty. The librarian was weeping openly, unable to reach her daughter in New Jersey. I remember how much I wanted the next day's newspaper to come. I wanted to hold the pages in my two hands and read the words -- as if the day's events might make more sense that way.

Over the next months the awful newspaper stories kept coming, and holding them in my hands didn't make them any more sensible: stories of the bereaved in New York, of anthrax in the Senate, of one suicide bombing after another in Israel. I cannot think of September 11 without also thinking of the last day of the following May. We have the front page from that day's NYT in our family album, with a huge photo of the trucks hauling away the last of the rubble from Ground Zero. On that same day, the baby who had announced his presence in my womb on September 11 made his exit from it.

I prepared our bed for his arrival, spreading layers of newspapers over a shower curtain. Stories of carnage, wreckage, grief -- on top of them all I spread an old sheet, and then leaned into the next contraction. Joe was born in the caul, and when the doctor slit the membrane that enclosed him, amniotic fluid burst forth exuberantly. It seems fitting to me now, soaking those stories of destruction in a bold kind of hope.

On the first anniversary of 9/11 I nursed my three-month-old Joe, admiring his perfect ears and eyelashes. I prayed for all my boys, as I have every year since then, that they would grow into men of courage, men willing to lay down their lives for others in need. That they would be peacemakers. To anyone affected by the events of 9/11 who winds up reading this post, we are praying for you tonight as well.