As the bright sunlight filters in through the window,
a familiar, distant thunder is heard; a jet circles in the
skies over Washington. Years ago, when I was a child,
planes flew directly over my house as they entered
the landing patterns for National Airport or Bolling Air
Force Base. They were a mild irritant because they
momentarily disrupted the TV reception as they made
their descent to earth.

Bolling long ago closed its runways and the flight
pattern for National has been changed. But this plane
isn’t landing; it is circling high over the city on a
patrol, guarding against possible terrorist attacks.

It’s far above my house, its engines a remote mutter,
yet it casts a shadow through the pattern of sunlight
shining through the trees and playing upon my living
room wall. It overlays the dancing leaves with an
invisible but tangible shadow of anger and fear.

Deadly explosions and sneaking attackers are things
that I thought I had left behind in another life in another
country. Yet, here they are again; they have followed
me home. And an old, long sublimated feeling returns,
vivid as ever: an impotent, banked, helpless rage. The
same anger I felt in the bunker down in Tay Ninh after I
returned to Trang Sup TDY.

I was waiting for a flight out, so I had no defensive
position to man. I just sat in the bunker with some others,
listening to and feeling the explosions erupting overhead
outside while someone else confronted the unseen enemy.

Dimly, I can hear children laughing outside as the sound
of the fighter fades into the distance. Remembered sounds
and odors recede; again, I’m in a room bright with sunlight
instead of a darkened bunker.