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They say God’s timing is perfect.

They must be right about that.

Back in the fall of 2001, I spent many a day in a pain-killer-induced fog, flat on my back in bed. Just when I felt a little energy coming on — maybe even enough to take a shower and get dressed before the kids came home from school — the doctor would deliver more bad news.

One lumpectomy didn’t get it all. Nor did the second. That meant a mastectomy and reconstruction. Three surgeries in as many months.

My youngest, Michael, says the only thing he remembers about that fall is the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and me in bed. He was 7 years old.

I’ve never been laid so low. If it hadn’t been for Christmas, well, I might have lost my mind.

* * *

That summer, John and I had decided to do something the Simmons-Robinson clan never does — not spend Christmas with either my family in North Carolina or his in Michigan.

The silence on the other end of the phone when I told my mom was deafening. Just this once, I cajoled.

Our family made a deal that summer, one I thought might be tough for the kids to live with. There would be no Christmas gifts for any of us. We needed to save every penny we could to pay for the trip.

I was wrong about the kids. The trip, we agreed, would be our gift to one another. We just needed to figure out where we wanted to go.

Christmas was the last thing on my mind as I stood in a surgeon’s office on the morning of Sept. 11. Just days earlier, I had undergone a biopsy. I was there to receive the diagnosis: breast cancer.

But no one said a word as patients, doctors and nurses huddled around the TV in the waiting room and watched in disbelief as planes took down the Twin Towers in New York City — over and over again on CNN. What was there to say?

I cried — and prayed — all the way home that morning. For me and New York City.

* * * 

New York City became our destination for Christmas. Something pulled us in that direction, and we spent that fall planning almost every detail of the trip.

Friends gave us tips on places to stay and sites to see. I researched on the Internet and read travel books, reporting my findings to John and the kids over dinners brought in by a network of church members, neighbors and co-workers.

Week by week, I felt a little bit stronger and began getting out of bed for longer stretches of time. Determined to be well enough to travel, I began to pack. The trip gave us all something to look forward to. And it helped me to heal.

Everyone thought I’d actually lost my mind when I packed a few strands of lights and some favorite ornaments, thinking we might have room for a modest tree in the efficiency apartment we’d rented.

Our Christmas stockings went in that suitcase, too. After all, Michael’s older sisters — Emily, then 14, and Caroline, 11 — had assured him that Santa could find our family anywhere, even hundreds of miles from home, on the 12th floor of Radio City Apartments.

Finally, on Saturday, Dec. 22, we boarded an Amtrak train just after 9 a.m. and snaked our way through every small town in North Carolina. By 4:30 that afternoon, we had made it all the way to Roanoke Rapids.

It was nearing midnight when the train pulled into Penn Station and we got our first view of the city. What a sight it was to behold, all decked out for our arrival.

* * *

The week flew by. On Sunday, we walked through Central Park and bought the last tree from a corner lot. After hailing a taxi and loading it in the trunk, we took it back to our apartment, which, it turned out, had just the right spot for a modest tree. It looked beautiful all decorated.

That night we walked around the corner and up the street to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular featuring The Rockettes — the tickets a gift from my mom. Afterward, we dined at the revolving rooftop restaurant at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

On Christmas Eve, dressed in our Sunday best, we waited on the steps of St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue to hear a boys choir. The first ones through when the doors opened for the service, we snagged seats in the second pew, right behind folk singer Judy Collins. (“Who’s that?” the kids asked.)

After a fancy Italian dinner out — it was Christmas Eve, and we had saved for it — we returned to the apartment to prepare for the night. The kids wrote their traditional letter to Santa, left a plate of cookies and a cup of milk on the table, then cracked a window to make sure he could get in.

When they finally fell asleep, John and I filled their stockings with goodies and left them under the tree, along with one small gift for each child, mementos I’d picked up on the trip. Turns out I’m the one who couldn’t live up to the deal.

Later that week, we took in a final performance of “The Fantasticks,” the longest-running off-Broadway show, at tiny Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village. We met a friend who lived in Harlem and sampled soul food at Sylvia’s, the world-famous restaurant. At Madame Tussauds in Times Square, we posed for cheesy photos with life-size wax figures of Princess Diana, Michael Jordan and The Beatles.

Still slowed from all the surgery, I sat on a bench and watched the kids ice skate in Central Park as snow fell on our last night in the city. Earlier that day, I had skipped a trip to Coney Island in favor of an afternoon nap. A good thing. The kids returned half-frozen a few hours later. John had insisted they walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. He wasn’t being cruel, he said, just historical.

* * *

The Rockettes. “The Fantasticks.” Sylvia’s. Madame Tussauds. We have envelopes full of photos to remind us of the fun we had.

But there’s one image permanently etched in our minds.

On Christmas Day, we boarded the subway after breakfast and headed downtown. Michael, now 15, still remembers getting off a block away from our destination. “You couldn’t hear anything,” he recalled recently. “Just silence.”

We spoke in whispers as we walked toward the huge crater that was ground zero. It was surrounded by a high metal fence covered with fresh flowers, banners and cards from well-wishers around the world, and photographs of those who had lost their lives three months earlier.

“When 9-11 happened, I felt so far removed from it,” said Emily, now a college graduate. “It was a reverent, almost holy way to spend Christmas Day.”

We stood at ground zero for a long time. The kids didn’t want me to take pictures. It would be disrespectful, they said.

So, I put the camera away.

We all agreed — and still do — that our trip to New York City was the best Christmas gift any of us ever received.

John, Emily, Caroline and Michael Robinson contributed to this story.