In the days just after the first attacks, I’d wake in the night from reoccurring dreams of violence and horror to find my four year-old son standing beside the bed, watching me sleep. My wife would be on the other side of the bed, trying to sleep as well, suckling our infant daughter whenever she awoke hungry and crying in the night.
He often startled me – my son did – just by standing there.
He wouldn’t do anything to wake me, I’d sense his presence, and seeing him, I would jump just a little, catch my breath, then remember myself, and reach out to him. He was always a big boy, and lifting him into bed, I would surprise myself at how weightless he felt. In those days, I was strong in the arms from hauling the dead, from loading the bodies onto trucks all through the week, from lifting and pulling them from the wreckage.
He would immediately go back to sleep, my son would, as soon as I lifted him into bed. I would then lay awake, and I would remember the days when we could still see stars over the major cities, one of many losses he would never know.
In the mornings, I woke before everyone, lay there, in the gray thoughtlessness, and I’d let myself slowly be brought to life by birdsong. There was a space of time when we didn’t hear the birds, wondered if they might be gone for good, not just hiding. I would often put my hand on his back to make sure that he was real, my boy, lying there fast asleep between us, and I would focus my touch on the pulse of his breathing.
We watched the news in our feed constantly, everyone did. You couldn’t go anywhere without the acrid smell of smoke and ash, and something synthetic as well, like burned plastic. We were poised between anger and gratitude, all of us, between fear and love. Everyone was afraid to choose. I chose anyway, those mornings, prayed to a G*d I no longer believed in, prayed: thank you for another minute, lord – and G*d, please, lord, just one more day.