I moved to Manhattan on Sept. 27, 2002, very aware of the fact that I was part of a new generation of New Yorkers who would not look at the skyline and know instinctively where the Twin Towers should have fit in.

My dad, a battalion chief in the Anchorage Fire Department, didn't want me to go. As far as he was concerned, it was bad enough that I'd been living in Boston on Sept. 11; that was closer to terrorism and further from home than he was comfortable with, and when I came back to Anchorage a couple of months after the attacks, he was thrilled. I don't know much about what my dad did in the days after 9/11, except that he spent almost every waking minute at the municipality's Emergency Operations Center and, according to my mother, came home every once in a while to shower and eat something before heading back. He probably had just enough information to be terrified at the idea of his daughter moving back across the country. But I was 23 and restless and had a job and an apartment lined up, and it really wasn't up to him.

Still, I love my dad, and in an effort to make him feel better about the whole thing, I spent some time on the Internet. I don't think Google Maps existed yet, but I found an interactive map somewhere, which led me to the discovery I knew would placate my uneasy father.

"Dad," I said, "my apartment is across the street from a fire station." I showed him the map, which put Engine 44 just yards away from my building on East 75th Street.
That changed everything. But my dad had very specific instructions.

"As soon as you get there, you go across the street and introduce yourself," he said.

"OK, Dad."

"And you tell them who your father is."

"OK, Dad." I probably rolled my eyes. "Should I bake them cookies, too?"

He considered this for a moment. "That's not a bad idea."

Confession time: I lived across the street from Engine 44 for two years and never baked them cookies. But I did go across the street and introduce myself, two years later, on the day I moved out. I hadn't been able to get rid of a couch I didn't want to move, so I went over to see if they needed it. Three firefighters came back across the street with me and came upstairs to take a look at the sleeper sectional I'd inherited from my boss. They didn't need it, but there was a guy on another shift who'd just bought a house.

"Listen, we'll move it into the station," one firefighter said, "and if he doesn't need it, we'll put it out for you on garbage day."

My dad was right. Making friends with FDNY was a good idea.

I think about Engine 44 on Sept. 11 -- like many companies, they lost brothers in the World Trade Center -- but I mostly think about America's Camp, where I go to volunteer every August and where our campers share a connection -- each lost a parent in the attacks. At camp we embrace the old saying that it's "better to light a candle than curse the darkness." Each year on the last night of camp all the campers and staff light candles together that we then bring home and, wherever we happen to be on Sept. 11, we light and think of one another and the good relationships and happy memories that came about because of that terrible day.

I'm not that different from a lot of the kids at camp, apart from one important distinction: My dad always came home. I didn't realize how important that was until I crossed paths with all these boys and girls whose parents went to work one day and never came back. So on Sept. 11, when everyone remembers in their own way, that's what I remember -- that I'm grateful for the kind of people who would make that kind of sacrifice for a stranger, and grateful that my dad never had to.

Contact Maia Nolan at maia(at)alaskadispatch.com.