I thought I knew fear, but I didn’t. Not until last night when Sienna was choking. The entire incident lasted 35-45 seconds, but it’s going to be with me for I don’t know how long. I’m trembling as I type this, so please forgive spelling/grammatical errors.

My sister, her husband, my parents, Elaine, Sienna and I  had gone to brunch to celebrate my mom’s 65th bday. We then headed back to the house for a bit. Sienna didn’t nap until a little after 3. She woke up around 6 screaming from hunger; she probably hadn’t eaten since 12:30/1. She was inconsolable, of course. I tried to give her Cheerios as Elaine got some real food ready, but she pushed the Cheerios away; she wanted something more substantial. Elaine came in with a warmed-up plate of leftover pizza cut up into little pieces and Sienna grabbed for them, wolfed them down. Elaine then heated up some corn and Sienna went after that too as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

Suddenly she was choking. No sounds. Really choking. Mouth wide open. Eyes closed. Tears forming. Hands to her neck and mouth. I saw the pizza sticking from her throat. I tried to get it, but Sienna’s flailed. I yelled for help and Elaine came running. She ripped the tray from the highchair, yanked Sienna out, fell to the floor with Sienna on her belly over knee, and somehow got the pizza out. Sienna cried as if she’d just been born. I sat frozen throughout. Helpless. Elaine broke down and would break down periodically over the next few hours. I think I cried a little, but mostly I was in shock.

Sienna was fine once she stopped crying. She refused the rest of the pizza, but went right after the corn. I shakily fed her a jar of food and some applesauce. It was like nothing had happened for her. She was right back to smiling and laughing and babbling.

My little girl was choking and it didn’t even occur to me to get her out of her highchair. I was too scared and stunned. I just yelled for help. I didn’t know what to do. I can’t shake this feeling that if we’d been alone, she might have died. I can’t stop blaming myself.

I told Elaine she was the hero and I was the paralyzed onlooker, but Elaine said she got lucky the pizza was still sticking out of her throat, that she’d blanked on what to do. Her reaction was instinctual. She kept saying she was lucky. We were both very, very lucky. And then she’d break down again.

It was the most traumatic 35-45 seconds of my life. I almost lost my beautiful little girl. I’m ok, but I’m not ok. Sienna’s laughing and crawling or all over me, showing off her stuffed monkeys, but my impotent calls for help sear my mind. I see Elaine struggling on the floor with Sienna. I see the coughed-up piece of pizza on the floor. Sienna’s cries ring in my ears.

This was terror like nothing I’d ever experienced. As we lay silently in bed a few hours later, each of us reliving the experience, Elaine and I reassured each other as best as we could, but we both knew how close we came to losing our little girl. We we were lucky. Elaine said we should take a child CPR class. I’m with her.

I don’t know when this feeling will go away. Sienna’s life already has returned to normal. I don’t know when mine will, when Elaine’s will. I don’t even know what normal is. For now I’m just clutching my little girl extra tight.

The perfectly centered chest pressure began around 6 pm on Tuesday evening, right after I left session. More than two days later, it hadn’t abated. This wasn’t an anxiety attack – at least not one that I’d ever experienced. Normally when I have a panic attack it feels like an anvil/anchor/cruise ship is pressing down on my chest, but it radiates, causes breathing difficulty and often tears. It also eventually passes. This pressure was constant, and when I felt a wave of nausea (a heart attack symptom along with chest pain/pressure) I decided it was time to head to the ER if only for peace of mind.

My dad drove me to North Shore Hospital while my mom stayed with Elaine and Sienna. Both my EKG and blood work came back normal, but they decided to keep me overnight for observation in something called the CDU (Clinical Decision Unit) so they could take a CAT scan of my heart using contrast dye in the morning. They kept telling me that having heart disease at 39 was abnormal, but not unheard of, so they wanted to be absolutely sure. What’s bizarre is that I never panicked throughout the entire experience (in fact, when I went for the CAT scan the following morning, the technician remarked about my calmness. Crazy, right?).

I spent the night alone as my dad had gone home not long before I was moved to the CDU. I texted with Elaine a bit before she went to sleep, but then it was just me and my thoughts. I lay in bed thinking about what I was missing at home: the security of being next to my amazing wife, the sleeping little girl who would turn 18 months while I was in the hospital. I wanted to hear Sienna shout, “Daddy!” with a huge smile on her face. I wanted to cuddle with Elaine. I longed to see something like this:

My blood pressure was consistently low (around 93 over 51) which was worrisome, though I normally have low blood pressure, but despite thinking about my funeral, expecting to hear I needed emergency bypass surgery or stents put in, I still didn’t freak out. I read a bit and eventually fell asleep.

The CAT scan was weird. When they injected the dye it felt like my body had filled with boiling oil, especially in the groin area, and my mouth tasted like pennies. I’d rather not have to go through that again. Later, back in the CDU, after a few hours of having to listen to the 30-year-old woman next to me who had a thick Long Island accent and gasped and exclaimed, “Oh…my…God!” over and and over as Maury Povich pronounced someone “The Father,” the doctor came in and said I was perfectly healthy. Strangely, I didn’t feel relief. I was just like, “Ok. Cool.” I can’t explain this reaction.

My mom picked me up and drove me home (many thanks to my parents for their help!). In the car she mentioned that she’d told her therapist about the events of the last few days and he said that it was possible my anxiety had entered a new phase, one in the which I showed growth. In his opinion, there was a chance that instead of manifesting in a full-on freak out, my anxiety simply sat there in my chest, and because I was growing emotionally, I didn’t panic. I need to discuss this with my own therapist, but it’s definitely possible since I HAD just left session when the pressure began and as already stated, I never became hysterical. All I know is that I missed Elaine and Sienna so much while in the hospital.

I hugged my wife and daughter when I got home, and then I started to unravel. Elaine said it was normal, that it was like air was suddenly and violently being released from a balloon. Irrational thoughts and exhaustion hit me like a tsunami, so Elaine put me to bed. I slept about four hours, awoke a bit disoriented, the pressure in my chest a little less, but I was ready to celebrate Sienna’s 18th birthday by going to the carnival that happened to be going on down the street.

Have I grown emotionally? Has my anxiety reached a new, improved level? I don’t know, but I have hope. All I know is that a night away reminded me how much I loved the people in my life and mere hours after I left the hospital (where despite remaining eerily calm, I feared learning I’d either suffered a heart attack or was about to), my little family – my gorgeous wife, my beautiful daughter, and I – walked down the street and enjoyed ourselves at the fair.

Deep breath.

That’s what I though the morning of Sienna’s first class. Elaine doesn’t know this. No one knows this. I was extremely nervous and I was so so glad my wife was going with Sienna and I to this music class at Thinkertots in Bayside, NY, because I’m not sure I could have done it alone. I know my daughter needs to get out as much as possible and I’ve been working on it, but I’ve also been dragging my feet because of my own fears about…what? I’m not sure, exactly. I just know I feel still feel a bit anxious taking her out and going to a class alone, most likely being the only dad in the room, felt very overwhelming. I think that’s one of the reasons I couldn’t decide on that class at Alley Pond Environmental Center that I wrote about a few blogs ago. Maybe I disguised it as a nap issue when in reality it was all about me?

Regardless, Sienna needed a class and so we signed her up for a music class Sunday mornings which allowed Elaine to go as well. Elaine teared up when we attended Thinkertots’ open house. She’d never told me how much she wanted to go to Sienna’s first class, but the morning of the open house, after Sienna was signed and sealed (she’d been delivered nearly 18-months prior…ha-ha!), Elaine disclosed just how much she wanted to go and I felt this enormous relief because no matter what, I wouldn’t be alone.

So back to the morning of the class itself. I was nervous. I wasn’t sure how many other parents and kids would be there. I wasn’t sure how Sienna would react, but I knew she needed to socialize. I leaned heavily on Elaine without her knowing about it. It turned out only two other kids were there; a 2-year-old and a 9-mo-old. Both were accompanied by women, so I was, as expected, the only guy. Sienna sat on Elaine’s lap for the early part of the class which allowed me to channel my anxiety into taking photos. She seemed nervous and a bit scared of the louder songs during which we used instruments such as bells and maracas handed out by our teacher, Miss Michelle. But she liked the slower songs and when we got to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” she gave me a smile and came over to sit on my lap. Then the scarves and bubbles came out and that’s when Sienna really began to enjoy herself and so did I.

By the end of the class my anxiety was gone. I’d survived and even came out my shell a bit. Sienna and Elaine had a great time. We’ll be attending music class every Sunday until the end of January and I hope more kids and parents show up because I really want Sienna to interact with other kids and I wouldn’t mind spending time with other parents. If another dad shows up, that’d be great, but if not, it’s ok. I realized after the class that having Elaine there was a bonus, not a crutch. The class was all about my daughter’s experience and her growth. Well, that’s not true – it’s also about our bonding in a social situation and that might be what’s most important. I’m happy to say looking forward to this Sunday.

It’s hard to believe that Sienna lives in a world in which the Twin Towers no longer stand, that when she’s studying about the tragedy of 9/11 in school textbooks, she’ll probably feel as far removed from it as I do from JFK’s assassination, Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, and so many other significant historical events. So how will I teach my daughter about 9/11? About how the world changed and didn’t change when those planes hit the towers, another hit the Pentagon, and a fourth was brought down by courageous passengers over Pennsylvania during the worst foreign terrorist attack on American soil? I guess it will be through the memory of actually living through it as my mom must have learned from her parents who fled Poland during World War II and my dad must have learned about living through the Great Depression from his parents. Fact: I was in Manhattan on that day. Fact: I was not near the destruction nor do I know of anyone personally who perished, but like almost everyone I know, I know people who knew people – Elaine’s friend’s husband; my father’s always pleasant acquaintance. And so I’ll describe to Sienna what I saw and lived through, things she can never truly learn from textbooks.

The most lasting image I have of 9/11 is standing on the roof of my office building on 22nd Street and 2nd Avenue, watching the Twin Towers burning while across the street, a handful of boys played schoolyard basketball under an azure sky. It was eerie, seeing life change forever and go on simultaneously, watching innocence up close and evil in the background. I never saw the towers fall for I’d left the roof just before the first crumbled so I could call my dad who worked in Chinatown to make sure he was ok, so like most people, I only experienced that devastation during the constant loop that was television over the next few days.

I remember one of the professors at work being stranded in Florida, how she was frantic, unable to contact her firefighter husband for days while he bravely helped victims and then worked all hours clearing Ground Zero. I will tell her how many such intrepid people eventually succumbed to cancer and other illnesses thanks to toxins they were forced to breathe.

I remember my dad picking me up at work, us driving to Queens, and me staring at a Manhattan skyline where a giant dust cloud had displaced the World Trade Center.

I remember attending the only candlelight vigil I’ve ever been to. It was held that night in front of my apartment building. Strangers cried and hugged each other.

I remember the city, the country, the world coming together.

I will tell Sienna how the entertainment and pop culture machine screeched to a halt for the first and only time in my life, and that when it returned, it did so cautiously; David Letterman’s sadness and weariness, his wondering if it was ok to laugh again; me attending my first ever World Series game, Game 3 between the Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks at which President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch as snipers lay still as stone on top of old Yankee Stadium.

I will tell Sienna about the grief that consumed the city, but also the love and unity.

I will take Sienna to the World Trade Center Memorial and wonder if she can feel the presence of the iconic Twin Towers as we stand in front of the beautifully designed fountains in which are carved the names of lost citizens and police officers and firefighters in the shadow of the Freedom Tower, a building that for her will be part of her normal landscape, but for me will always feel something like an intruder.

I will show her the giant purple beams of light that appear each 9/11. I will let her watch the names of the lost being read by their loved ones. And when she’s old enough, I will show her United 93 and explain the visceral reaction I had when I first saw it, the film being one of the very few I’ve seen that really hit me emotionally, and how I often watch it on 9/11 as my way to remember and honor the thousands lost that day.

I will be there to answer any questions she might have and will do so openly and honestly, and I will hope that she never has to experience something akin to or worse than 9/11, something that will forevermore necessitate the word: Remember.