Today I Heard a Plane

I took a break for a cup of tea late this afternoon on the deck after getting most of the house cleaned. It was also a good excuse to visit with the hummingbirds, I'll admit, as well as do a bit of reading. While sitting there in the quiet, I heard a plane flying to the north. Whenever I hear a plane while I'm outside, I normally look since most of them are low enough I can almost wave to the pilot--which I do due to my being a habitual "waver".

Many people don't realize that just across the river from us is a very nice landing strip that people use quite frequently, it seems. Tom's late cousin, Rich, would come to visit us on occasion or offer us an afternoon of flying when we met him there. Due to its close proximity to our house, the planes are quite low either on take-off or landing, so it's always a waving opportunity.

So, today when I heard the plane, my thoughts, quite naturally, went back to 9-11-01. I was principal at Otwell Elementary at that time and this is one of those occasions you pray never happens on your watch. I didn't have any tv reception in my office at that time, so I spent hurried trips to the custodian's office to get updates and watch quick clips of the coverage in order to keep the adults in the building aware of events while keeping the kids in their safety zone of "just another day". Tom also called me from time to time to give me the needed information as events unfolded.

Needless to say, the phone calls started pouring in from concerned parents, grandparents, etc. In retrospect, I know they weren't terrified that their children were in danger in the building that day; they were terrified their children were in danger from the change in events the world was helplessly witnessing.

The kids themselves had interesting perceptions of what happened. Some were blessedly oblivious, while others knew/heard enough to know that something happened and they were trying to grasp it in their capacity.

I can remember one little boy in particular who, on a good day, had difficulty grasping the world in its day-to-day form. The days following 9-11 were surreal to him, so he came and visited me in my office quite often--not because he was in trouble, but because he needed to give me "messages". His message to me, every time, was that he saw the planes crashing to the Twin Towers over and over again on the news--to him that was literal. He would come to my office door, meet me in the hall, or come find me wherever I was. He would use his hands to pantomime the tragedy, forming one hand in the shape of a plane and then "crash" it into his other arm while telling me that "it happened again--I saw it on tv". I explained to him several times that week that tv shows the same thing over and over again and that the planes weren't doing that anymore. Then, every time, he would look at me and make the same request--"can I rub your head?" I had a flattop at that time and apparently the texture of it was somehow soothing to him...I had my head rubbed a lot that week.

One other event I can remember with great clarity was the silence and pristine nature of the skies. I recall calling Kurt out onto the deck later that week and asking him to look up. I suggested to him that at no time since the discovery of air flight had the skies in the United States been empty--completely devoid of any planes, jets, helicopters--anything. No familiar white streaks through the sky from vapor trails, no sounds--we were witnessing a virtual time warp.

Since that day our world has certainly changed in many ways; we have regained many of our old habits, yet with an underlying guardedness. We mark the event each year with mixed emotions of anger, sadness, helplessness, and confusion. We want to deny that this could ever have happened on United States soil, but it did. Life is not as it once was.

So, today when I heard that plane, I looked up, said a prayer for peace and patience and a deeper understanding of how we all play a part in the universe. And then I waved.