Moments in Time

Rifiuto: Non Miriena

Summary: Life can take you by surprise. A marriage proposal, the birth of a child, your eighteenth birthday, all are snatches in time, moments forever frozen in memory, of the unexpected, unplanned, sometimes surprising and breathtaking, but never unwanted. And then there are the moments you never expect- the moments that take your breath away, but never for a good reason. Yes, life is built of moments, moments that can build you up, and moments that can tear you down with one breath. It's because of those moments, that you must learn to accept, and move on, even when your heart is telling you not to. Yes, one moment, it can change your life. Completed last year, as part of my friend V's 9/11 novel challenge- I've just changed the original characters to fit her favorite movie characters. Modern AU.

"Hi! Say 'Hi', Mommy!"

"Hey, Anna."

"Man, Els, you look horrible."

"That's exactly what a new mother wants to hear just minutes after giving birth. Thanks a lot, Ans. You know who she's gonna take that out on? Me."

"I'm too tired to take anything out on anyone."

"So, where is he? Let me see my nephew!"

"You saw him, Anna! You just recorded the birth!"

"I know, but I didn't get to see him all cleaned up and pretty!"

"We let you film Nicky's birth, and you're still not satis- ow!"

"Let her be, Jack. Come here, Anna. Meet your nephew- Nicholas."

"Oh, Elsa, he's beautiful..."

So many moments can change a person's life. The birth of my nephew Nicholas certainly changed mine, as well as my sister and brother-in-law's.

All for the better.

As I sit here, years later, closing in on the thirteenth anniversary of the attacks, I chose not to watch the numerous documentaries and remembrances on that dismal day that started out so beautiful, but on the life that had just begun, and the lives that would ultimately end. As I freeze the frame, my sister stares up at me; for all her exhaustion, she's smiling and absolutely... glowing, cradling her newborn son, her oldest, Nicky, in her arms, as her husband, Jack, sits beside her on the bed, pressing a kiss to her head, his arms around her.

Nicky's birth was a long, exhausting ten hours that started in their apartment in the Upper West Side at six that morning and ended in the Memorial Hospital at four in the early evening. I was eight, and it was the first time I'd ever seen anything even remotely as... astounding as a birth. I was staying with my sister and her husband in Manhattan while our parents- who lived in Staten Island- were off in Norway, playing ambassadors. See, our father was the American Ambassador to Norway; our grandfather had held the position, as had our great-grandfather and...

You get the picture.

Anyway, when our parents left, they asked my sister and brother-in-law if I could stay with them and go to school; I had to transfer to a nice new school on the UWS as I call it, and get settled- at first, I was afraid Elsa didn't want me, because she had a baby on the way, but Elsa, being Elsa, agreed. See, she was seventeen at the time, and had graduated high school two years earlier; going off to college at fifteen. It was nineteen-ninety-one, and I had just turned nine a month earlier.

I start the video again, biting my lip and watching in silence as Jack pulls away and leans over my sister's shoulder, reaching out to brush his finger against his son's tiny hand. "He knows who his daddy is, don't you, little love?" Jack's laugh, that smooth tenor my sister loved so much fills my ears, and I watch as the baby wraps his miniscule fingers around his father's own index finger. To think, that back then, I hated Jack, simply for the fact that he took my sister away from me...

He'd met Elsa back when they were in elementary school; he'd pulled her braid and she'd shoved him into the dirt. Then, he moved away to Manhattan and they lost contact; they ran into each other at a coffee shop, when she was entering and he was leaving- he spilled his drink all over her white blouse and offered her his over shirt, at least, that's how Elsa always told it. By then, both in high school, they'd reconnected, and started dating. Then, two years prior to Nicky's birth, after my sister graduated from high school, they'd eloped to Queens. We'd lost touch, she and I, but then, a year and a half after they'd eloped, she showed up on our parents' doorstep, Jack by her side, asking for our parents' blessing. And Papa, always with a soft spot for my sister, turned a blind eye to her indiscretions, just happy to have her back in our lives.

So when my father accepted the position to Norway, the first person he turned to was Elsa, even though by then, she and Jack had been married for only about three years, and had a baby coming. But Elsa and Jack, they agreed to watch me, for however long the assignment was, no matter how chaotic things would get when the baby came. They agreed, because it was Elsa, and because Jack knew how close she and I were, no matter the years that separated us in age. And we lived, in a beautiful old brownstone that had belonged to Jack's great-grandfather- the same brownstone that Jack's parents had left him in their will. Both had died in a plane crash back when Jack was eighteen, and he'd basically raised himself; most thought he'd go on to be a delinquent or a criminal, but he got a job with the FDNY, and was doing pretty well for himself. And he absolutely loved my sister, which was a huge plus in my nine-year-old eyes.

As I sit on the sofa, watching as my sister and brother-in-law bask in the glow of new parenthood, I've begun to realize that at that moment in time, we were all... happy. And none of us- not Jack, or Elsa, or myself- had ever considered that we wouldn't be around to watch that baby boy grow up. And it wouldn't be until nearly ten years later that such a thought would cross any of our minds-

Or, that on a clear, beautiful, sunny Tuesday morning in the Financial District of Downtown Manhattan, three thousand lives would end, buildings would fall, and the skies would fill with smoke.

But none of us thought anything of the sort- not even when that moment stared us all in the face.