One early morning last week, while my dreams were still there, I heard a propeller through the morning air. I keep my window open on these cool spring nights, as I reconnect with the worlds. It was strange; we’ve been a no fly zone for years, even before that crisp, beautiful autumn day put an end to flights overhead in many a city. I woke, not expecting to hear fighters scramble, and then I knew things had changed again.
There was a time that sort of thing would have made the morning and evening news, which I no longer watch or listen to, but not a word. There was a time there’d be interviews with agents, and relatives and roar of jets. Evacuations of buildings for a turboprop off course, buzzing corridor 2, and we’d stand in the drizzle and cold and wonder who could be so stupid, take such a risk. We’d know not to jerk too much out of our seats in the last thirty minutes, lest we find ourselves at Dulles. We adjusted to no answers to the delays into the stations, and crossed or fingers over phrases like “police activity” and “suspicious package.”
Over lunch T said things have gone back to the way they were before and I think he’s right. We mentally shake our fists at the “security alerts” for delaying us in our travels home. We’re not on edge, but we’re still not the same. Perhaps it is because we are not as seared by the moment; fortunate as we were not to be in the wrong place to be on that day, we found ourselves there shortly after. He’s a fair bit older than those sucked into the crucible of the time, and I grew up with terrorism as a constant. Or perhaps it is that times have changed, that we have tired of color codes, admonitions from on high and exhortations to be vigilant.
In time I too have changed. I’m back at my pre-surgery weight. I notice that in the right light, if I turn the right way, with my arms up above my shoulders and my hands behind my head, that I can see years of work displayed in muscle. I can’t get back 2 years of time, and I’ve changed and adjusted. My priorities have changed, and how I spend my nights, or at least the weighting of preference has changed. I’ve lost the anger and fire of those times, as if it was removed along with all those pounds, erased by fear. I need some of that fire back, and I glimpse it now and then, but not in the places I once did, so I keep looking.
Decennial birthdays are a big deal in the land of my birth, time to think about what has passed and what’s to come. Time to consider where I am and how I got here, and what I am now.
[...] which while not a solution, would mitigate the damage. I would tie part of the VA’s budget3 to that of DoD, ensuring that as funding increases for wars, the VA sees an automatic increase in [...]