I got a phone call at about 2 p.m. on September 11, 2001, from Georgetown Hospital. The hospital said that my son needed a blood transfusion, STAT. STAT I learned means right now and it would have been better earlier. I asked the hospital how I was supposed to get there, seeing that I lived in Virginia and the bridges between Virginia and DC were all closed by early afternoon of that day. 

There is a way to get to DC, if I had gone up to Point of Rocks and then down through all the back country to River Road, but I didn’t even want to think about trying to fight all the traffic fleeing the city, with four children, ages 5 to 12 in the car. Nor did I want to be far from home if worse things were going to happen. And I was afraid of getting lost, going that way, if I’m being honest. 

We discussed trying to get the transfusion from Loudoun Hospital, and the Georgetown staff worried about trying to get a safe (as in no extra germs from other people in the waiting rooms) transfusion from people unfamiliar with pediatric cancer patients. In the confusion of that afternoon, no-one was sure there would be blood available the next day, because it goes to whoever needs it first at any given moment. As events turned out, there would be plenty of blood for transfusions the next day, because people in New York mostly either got out of the buildings or died. But, neither I nor the staff of Georgetown hospital knew that would be the case, in the afternoon decision moment.

I decided to wait. I had a really bad night worrying. 

There used to be a back way to Georgetown Hospital, so Wednesday morning I stuck the kid into the car and drove into DC over Key Bridge. At times, on the George Washington Parkway, at 9 a.m. on a weekday morning, I was the only vehicle on the road. As I crossed the bridge I was looking at guys with large weapons standing on the DC side, watching me drive across. I don’t want to see that again.

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The earthquake in Morocco is all mixed up with these memories. A six-year-old boy from Morocco was a patient for some of the same time as my son. He arrived about six weeks after 9/11. Of course, we haven’t seen him for twenty years, so I have no idea if his family was affected. But I haven’t forgotten him. At one point in his treatment, he refused to eat but, if we came to the clinic, he would eat three tortilla chips, IF and only if, five-year-old super-blond-curls daughter offered them to him.

His name was Ahmed. It’s pronounced Ah-mod, like modern or codfish, with a short ‘o’ sound, and the accent on the second syllable. Most people want to say Ah-med, like Mediterranean, accent on the first syllable. In my rabbit brain I contemplate this dichotomy in pronunciation because it happens also with my last name. 

Meyerhofer is pronounced with a short ‘o’ sound in the third syllable. Once people see it written they want to make a long ‘o’ sound because that is actually the phonetic rule, whether they are fully aware of it or not. Think ‘hopping’ vs ‘hoping’ and it might help. Anyway over the years I have seen that people either want to spell the name with two ‘f’s (Meyerhoffer) or they want to pronounce it as they have never heard it. 

This is the part that is so mysterious. I’ve never said my name with the long sound. Ahmed never introduced himself as Ah-med. But some people’s brains change things. I had to work on saying Ah-mod’s name correctly but my seven-year-old son was adamant about it, having asked him specifically and carefully, what his name was. I hope his family is all right.

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There is a comet flying around the sun this week. The morning of September 12, this morning before dawn, was supposed to be good viewing time. Tony went out to look yesterday morning but it was all cloudy here. Hopefully next week there will be a brief chance in the evening. This comet is moving fast! 

I saw Halley’s comet in 1985 -1986 so I know that all you see with a lot of comets is a glow in an unfamiliar place if, in fact, the sky were familiar, which for most of us these days, it isn’t. We would never notice most comets if we weren’t told to look. I do like that this comet was found by an amateur, Japanese astronomer, Hideo Nishimura. Many of the comets of the last thirty years have been discovered by amateurs. Food for thought there. 

Anyway here is the APOD url for September 12 and the picture, of Comet Nishimura, is absolutely gorgeous. Check it out. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Also I had a post about Teilhard de Chardin that I bumped for 9/11 and comets. So Friday!