Shortly after I woke this morning, I was standing in my kitchen making coffee and preparing to make the usual Sunday morning big breakfast, when I heard the ever-familiar tones of my husband's and son's pagers.

As a wife and mother of firefighters - and as the city's emergency management director - I know there is no guarantee of a quiet Sunday morning.

A few minutes later, my shirtless firefighter son - who is now working to become a paramedic - came running up the stairs, holding his socks and shoes in one hand and a shirt in the other. 

He raced out to his father's waiting truck, and the two - not having had breakfast yet - raced off to the fire station, to join the other firefighters who probably not had breakfast either.

My son's faithful pit bull, Macy, raced upstairs and jumped on the couch and howled until the truck carrying her master disappeared from sight. She quieted until she heard the sirens, then she started up howling again. This was ordinary, too.

I went back to pouring my coffee. It was, after all, just another ordinary fire call, like the thousands of ordinary fire calls that had come before it and the thousands of ordinary fire calls that would come after it.

This wasn't anything to get excited about... it's just another day in the life of a firefighter family.

They'd be back in a few hours and I'd make them a big Sunday breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage and hot coffee.

I finished pouring my coffee and started to put the coffee pot back into it's place on the coffee maker.

That's when it happened: I saw the clock on the coffee maker.

It was 9 a.m.

It was just after 9 a.m. on Sept. 11.

My heart froze and I choked on the coffee I had already sipped.

As I heard the sound of the siren calling all firefighters to respond pierce the quiet Sunday morning in this small city in rural Wisconsin, I realized this was no ordinary fire call.

There is no such thing.

Every fire call has the potential to be deadly. Every fire call.

After all, for a short innocent time on Sept. 11, 2001, we all thought the solitary plane that had crashed into World Trade Center was just an ordinary aviation accident.

And the firefighters racing to respond were just going on an "ordinary call". Sure, it was a big building and it would require some creative response... but it was, after all, just another fire call and this is what they were trained to do.

It wasn't until the second plane hit that we realized we had been attacked on our own soil.

And our first to die on the field of battle would be firefighters... not soldiers.

For the first time, in a long time, I cried over the events of 9-11.

I cried for the wives who became widows that day. Who were carrying unborn children who would never meet their firefighter fathers. Wives who would have to become both mother and father to children who would need a lot of love and understanding to cope with the enormity of their fathers' deaths.

Wives who people would admire for their strength, who would weep for hours into empty pillows at night, who would refuse to wash their dead husband's shirts because they didn't want to lose his scent.

As the wife of a firefighter, I cried for all the wives who lost their best friends, their soul mates that day.

And I cried for all the mothers.

All the mother who lost sons that day.

Mothers who, just like me, had held their newborn sons close in the moments after birth, and wondered what they would become... how they would change the world.

Mothers who, just like me, had watched anxiously over their son's first tentative steps. Who took them to see fire trucks in parades, and bought them little fire trucks to play with. Who dressed them up as firefighters for Halloween.

Mothers who, just like me, had navigated their sons through the dangerous waters of adolescence and into the safer waters of manhood.

Mothers who, just like me, had watched their sons grow up with the dream of being a firefighter, mothers who had beamed with pride when their sons first donned turn-out gear, and had proudly worn "Firefighter's Mom" sweatshirts to grocery stores and football games.

I cried, trying to visualize an ordinary home in New York, where a firefighter's mother, sipping her morning coffee, just like me, stepped into her living room to see what had caused the new bulletin to break into regular programming.

I tried to see her, this mother wearing a robe, just like me, and tried to imagine what it was like, that sunny morning, 10 years ago, when television cameras captured and replayed footage of the buildings collapsing around her fine, brave son.

I cried, as I heard the siren of the racing fire truck carrying my husband and son down the highway to an unknown danger.

I thought back to the imaginary mother I had been thinking of... and cried real tears for her because I knew that she wasn't imaginary.

She was real. I didn't know her name and I didn't know what she looked like, but she was real. And so were the other 342 other mothers of firefighters who died that day.

Some were at work when the news came. Some were shopping. Some were living in nursing homes. 

All were doing ordinary things on an ordinary day when the ordinary fire call sent their sons into the pages of history.

Even now, as I sit in my home office, typing this blog, I can look out the window and see a column of dark smoke snaking into the sky across town.

My husband and my son, my first-born son, who has wanted to be a firefighter since could visualize a profession for himself, are facing the unknown dangers that firefighters face every day when they answer the call.

Yes, they have both education and experience in firefighting. And yes, they are surrounded by a brotherhood of firefighters who will be at their back, helping keep them safe. And yes, this is a house fire in rural Wisconsin, not a skyscraper in NYC.

Yes, I know all these things mean that they most likely will come home just fine in a few hours. They'll be tired but flush with the thrill of fighting a fire. They'll eat a mountain of the hot pancakes I'll make for them, and devour a gallon orange juice and a pot of coffee.

Then, my son will put his arm around my shoulders and I'll get a familiar whiff of smoke, and he'll kiss the top of my head and thank me for breakfast, then head back downstairs to shower then study for his paramedic test tomorrow. Macy, happy her master has returned safely, will snuggle up next to him and snore.

My husband will offer to help clean-up, which I refuse. And then he'll go upstairs to shower, so we can get on with the rest of the plans for our day.

Yes, that is likely what will happen when this call is done.

After all, it's just an ordinary call.

God bless the 343 and all those died that day. Bless those who loved and lost them that day. They are forever in our hearts.