I lit my fire last night for the first time this year … and expected to fall into a deep trance staring at the flickering Duraflame.
Instead, a deep panic set into my throat followed by what felt like a swallow of sadness.
I put my hand to my chest as I stared into the new fire and remembered … yes, yes, of course, I was on the roof on September 11th the last time I stared at a fire.
The last time I stared at an impossible, impossible fire.
It’s funny how these little treats have been tainted now hanging out on the roof, lighting the fire. It was hard enough to get through my guilt over having any human pleasure at all … to light the damn fireplace, but now the glowing tongues of red, orange and blue licking their way up the chimney bring it all back.
I lay there on my side, staring into the flames and let all the spectacular images good and bad that I have seen, felt, heard or smelled wash over me.
There was the dust-covered, ground zero building I passed on a Gatorade run to the pile. Someone had dragged a finger through the thick, gray nothing to etch out a message to all of us who passed: “They may destroy our buildings, but not our souls.”
There was the man, my last client on my last day at Safe Horizon who lived two blocks from the WTC. He told me about watching a chain of four people holding hands who jumped together. He watched them sail downward clasped to each other.
“Most people say they jumped to die. … I say they jumped as their last act of rebellion. They chose to rebel against death by putting it on their terms,” said this quiet, unintentional prophet who’d lost his home and his business.
I think of him often.
I read of a woman in Israel. She referred to this as our time of sitting Shiva, and I think that feels right, only how long does it take to sit Shiva for so many thousands of innocents? How do you sit Shiva?
I have done this before, covered the mirrors, poured instant coffee for other mourners, doled out bagels with cream cheese, small cakes, but that is not this kind of Shiva.
Although covering the mirrors seems oddly okay.
I am thinking about the miracles: the young woman I met who was just a few minutes late for work at Windows on the World and missed entering the building.
“I’ll never scold her for being late again,” said her fiancé. They expect to be married sometime next year.
I am thinking about the cloth.
I watched the rabbi at ground zero slowly unfold a blue velvet cloth with a Star of David on it and then place the prayer book and shofar on the cloth before beginning Rosh Hashanah services.
Yet when Brian mailed me the photos he’d taken of the services, the cloth was gone.
I asked him if he remembered the blue velvet cloth and he did. He absolutely did, only he remembered it etched with a symbol perhaps of the Torah.
We both saw the cloth, but saw two different emblems. We saw the cloth as clearly as I am looking at this computer screen as I write this and yet the cloth did not appear in the photos.
“It was a windy day,” Brian wrote in his email, “It must have blown away just before I took the shots.
But it didn’t; I think we both knew that.
Was the cloth ever there?
Was it just invisible to the camera?
These are the kind of questions that could drive you mad, but I choose to think of it as my own private little miracle. … Well, Brian’s and mine.
I don’t know him well, but now we’ve shared a miracle …twice.
Rosh Hashanah services at Ground Zero, followed by the amazing appearing and disappearing blue velvet cloth.
Someone is trying to tell me something…
I ordered up Chinese food, as usual and broke open the fortune cookie I never eat.
It read, “Courage is contagious.”
