I was born at 10:12 a.m. on a Thursday, which astrologers will tell you is a fine time for a Sagittarius to emerge from the womb and immediately bring fire and chaos into the world. I, of course, was not aware of any of this at the time. I was fresh out of the birth canal, undercooked, and screaming, like most people born in the greater New York metro area.
White Plains Hospital smelled of bleach, microwaved coffee, and floor wax – so I’m told. My mother, having been induced the night before, was in hour eleven of labor and reportedly swearing at everyone with a badge or clipboard. My father was allegedly pacing the waiting room, which was his preferred method of being supportive.
This is how my life began: not with a whimper, but with the faint scent of burning carpet drifting in from a mile down the road.
The Stouffer’s Inn, on the morning of December 4th, 1980, was packed with guests. Business people, mostly. White Plains wasn’t exactly a vacation hotspot, but it was well-situated for New York’s overflow. The inn had those awkward, overly plush interiors common in the late ’70s. Maroon carpets, brass fittings, too many mirrors. People checked in and out like ghosts – corporate travelers on expense accounts, always in transit, always with a suitcase and an alibi.
That morning, someone – no one’s quite sure who – lit the corridor on fire.
Not a romantic, metaphorical fire. A literal one. Accelerants, ignition, combustion. The flames moved quickly. It turned out the maroon carpet wasn’t just hideous, it was flammable as hell. Fire codes in 1980 were more like suggestions. The kind offered over a cigarette and ignored with a shrug. People panicked. Some escaped. Twenty-six didn’t.
Back at the hospital, I was being weighed. Seven pounds, four ounces. A nurse would later describe me as “healthy but squinty,” which is also how I’ve been described on most dating profiles since. The doctor – Dr. Feldstein, a man with an unfortunate resemblance to a melancholy pelican – told my mother that everything had gone “as expected.” My mother disagreed. Her version of events involved more screaming and blood than the hospital pamphlet had led her to believe.
My dad, to his credit, made it back to the delivery room just after I arrived, carrying a coffee and a newspaper, blissfully unaware that his newborn son had timed his birth within minutes of one of the deadliest hotel fires in state history.
The first sign something was wrong came with the sirens.
Hospitals hear sirens constantly. It’s part of the wallpaper. But these were different. These came in waves. Sirens upon sirens, growing louder and more urgent. Then came the stretchers. Burn victims. Smoke inhalation. One after another, rushed through the doors.
The maternity ward, normally a bubble of pink balloons and polaroids, shifted tone. Nurses left. Phones rang. The intercom crackled with clipped instructions and code calls. My mother, sedated and confused, reportedly asked if there was “another baby coming.” My father stood by the window, watching smoke climb into the sky above the trees.
I like to imagine that I slept through it all.
That’s the comforting narrative. That I was swaddled in a hospital-grade cotton wrap, dreaming infant dreams, while the world around me burst into flame. But maybe I didn’t. Maybe that was the first thing I ever sensed. Smoke in the air, tension in the walls, a crack in the calm veneer of the adult world.
Maybe I’ve been absorbing tragedy since the moment I opened my eyes.
The fire made the news that night.
“Tragedy in White Plains,” the anchor said. Grainy footage showed the charred exterior of the inn, fire trucks parked at awkward angles, soot-covered survivors holding blankets to their faces. Twenty-six dead, another twenty-four injured. The youngest victim was a junior sales rep, age twenty-four, in town for a seminar on future-proofing corporate training programs.
I mention this because my dad watched the news that night while holding me. He’d bring it up when we had dinner in later years.
“Born in fire,” he’d say with a smirk. “Just like a damn omen.”
We didn’t live in White Plains. It was just the hospital closest to my parents’ temporary rental. My dad had taken a six-month assignment with a defense subcontractor based out of nearby Stamford. My mom didn’t want to give birth in Connecticut. “Too smug,” she said. So White Plains it was.
We left the hospital two days later. By then, the story had mostly faded from the headlines. America was already bored of tragedy. Reagan had just been elected, John Lennon was still alive, and cable news hadn’t yet learned how to milk catastrophe for 24-hour coverage. People mourned, made donations, sued quietly.
The Stouffer’s Inn was renovated, repainted, renamed. Eventually sold. No plaque commemorates the victims. The suspected arsonist, a busboy, was charged but later released on appeal due to a lack of conclusive evidence. The case was never definitively solved.
I wouldn’t learn about any of this until years later. As a kid, when I asked about the day I was born, my mom told me it was “a whirlwind.” I thought she was being poetic. Turns out she meant it quite literally.
It wasn’t until I was thirty-five, sifting through old Wikipedia articles during a depressive spiral, that I saw the date and location side-by-side and felt a chill. I texted my mom:
Me: Where exactly was I born again?
Mom: White Plains Hospital. Why?
Me: Did anything…happen that day?
Mom: LOL besides giving birth? No.
Later that week, I called and told her about the fire. There was a long pause. She claimed she “sort of remembered” something about commotion. Said maybe there were a lot of stretchers? But she was on drugs and exhausted, so who knows.
I do wonder sometimes what the odds are. Being born at almost the exact time as a mass-casualty event, a stone’s throw from where it happened. Not involved. Just present. A silent witness. A footnote in someone else’s tragedy. The first in what would become a yearly tradition.
It’s hard not to see it as a kind of cosmic joke. A message from the universe, scrawled in fire and smoke: Welcome to Earth. Here’s how we do things.