Sky

This morning in Oregon, the world woke to a crystal clear September sky.  As I pulled away from the driveway, the contrail of a jet flying north glowed pink from sunlight that had not yet reached the horizon.

It reminded me of the silence of the day after. A silence you could feel. A silence that burned emotion into you. A silence that forced reflection.

We worried about the children, and tried to hide the truth. We forgot that they see everything with wide open eyes, and that what we don't tell them, they tell each other.

In their new world, they spent their playground days telling tales of Osama Bin Laden hidden at the bottom of the dark stairs outside the old one-room school house that still stood next door. And one afternoon, they closed themselves in the bathroom at the neighbors' house to secretly look at the photos in Time Magazine as though they were sneaking a peek at naked boys.

By time I drove over the river this morning, the sun had become a glowing red ball, rising in the sky. Another jet passed high above, its contrail now a pure white streak across the blue. The normalcy of a new day.