One of the brave

My son's fiancée sent me these photos of my boy. The fire department takes these portraits annually and posts them inside the member's home firehouse. The first was taken in 2019, when our son was a proby, newly assigned to his engine company. The second was taken last year, during his rotation with a ladder company. One of the things I learned when he became a firefighter, is that engine companies handle the water hoses and ladder companies scale high ladders to climb onto rooftops or clamber through windows to go inside the fire, performing search and rescue. No surprise, my son is more drawn to the work of ladder houses, despite the fact that his mother and his fiancée would much rather think of him pointing the stream of water from outside.

My son's love and I marveled at how innocent he looks in the first photo, and how much more world weary he appears two short years later. Maybe he was fresh to a new shift in the first photo, and was coming off an all nighter with lots of calls in the second, parched and sleep-deprived, and definitely a bit more grizzled. And yet, even in the second image, his eyes say he's where he wants to be, safeguarding life and property as one of New York's Bravest. May he always remain so certain of his calling, and may he and his fellow firefighters be safe always.