Reflections On A Day In History

That day I had two things in common with our President: We both spent the morning in an elementary school, and we both were outraged by the murder of innocent civilians. I remember the way the world responded to our grief in kind, and the way our leaders rallied around that singular moment, gathered together on the Capitol steps. It wasn't until a few days later that I began to wonder how long this unity of spirit and vision could last.

The sign on the front door of my son's preschool read, "Let's keep the world outside today." Six years ago, as the events of what was taking place on the right edge of our country was just coming to light for us out here on the left edge, the choice was made by the parents of the co-op to try and keep things as normal as possible for a group of three-to-five-year-olds who probably had no idea why mom and dad couldn't tear themselves away from CNN.
We couldn't stop watching because we had never seen anything like it. We were watching the United States of America being attacked. Over and over. In slow motion. And no matter how many times we saw it, the images never quite made sense. It was a better idea to play in the block room. Or read a book by Richard Scarry. Or sit on the floor, surrounded by the sounds of life going on.
Because that's the thing that I remember the most: the silence. There was no traffic. Even though schools stayed open, the calm was unsettling. Living in the vicinity of two major airports, the sudden lack of planes overhead only added to the feeling of dread. When the sun went down, all the grownups returned to their places in front of the glow of the television, still waiting for that one angle that would make everything sensible again. We're still waiting.