Another Birthday Wish

It’s funny how the day started as my “happy birthday.” It was the sixth, in fact, in a series of just such occasions.  It’s funny how I ended the day in much the same mindset as I had began it: I was now six. That is one more than five, good for me.

I got a birthday wish that day. I could close my eyes and puff out my cheeks and have anything in the world.  I had to think long and hard, of course, to accommodate such power.

If I had known that two hours away from the smiling cake on my dining room table, two planes were heading to the edge of the city, towards the twins that held up that big apple, I may have wished to stop them, to steer them away from New York’s two tall protectors.  If I had known of the struggle aboard those few commercial aircrafts, that was undoubtedly taking place as I watched the flickering f my six birthday candles, I may have wished good fortune on the Americans who waited helplessly for the foreigners to decide their fate.  And had I been watching the news as two planes collided into the twin towers at ground zero, had I known what that meant or who it meant that to, I may have wished that those hundreds of lives be spared in the flames.  I may have wished that even just one more body would be retrieved from the ashes with a beating heart �" one more life saved, one more family spared, one less soul lost to the wind or fed to the burden of a grieving nation.

On September 11, 2001, as I stood over my six little flames with my cheeks puffed out, had I known that two massive other flames were about to be ignited at ground zero, I may have wished to blow them out as I let out the breath waiting in cheeks. But as it happened, the “tragedy” of 9/11 meant nothing to me, and as hundreds of screams turned to ashes, I closed my eyes, puffed out my cheeks, and wished for a pony.   

Reviews

[Wandering Violet]

A moving story, highlighting the innocence of childhood. Massive tragedies can be happening in the adult's lives, but to the birthday child, it is still their day. I remember when a helicopter crashed in our city the day before my Nana's birthday - I was six at the time, and being worried that she was so upset about the helicopter that it would ruin her party!
A well-written short story. Good work!