Tuesday sirens

Every Tuesday at ten o'clock in the morning, our city tests its emergency alert system, setting off the sirens on the town Square. You can hear the blast from any home in town.

The sirens went off five years ago, while Mom and I watched the news in horror, that bright Tuesday morning of September eleventh.

Imagine yourself in a little town a million miles from anywhere, not a cloud in the sky, knowing that your country has been attacked in many places -- a plane has even been crashed in rural Pennsylvania. You know you are at war, but you don't know why, how, how greatly, or, really, anything at all. In the midst of that uncertainty comes a long blast of a siren reserved for imminent local danger.

I saw panic in my mother's eyes, and I suppose she saw it briefly in mine. And then, at the same moment, we said to each other, "Tuesday", and laughed nervously. The panic was gone. The dread remained.

Mile after mile of video footage has not done to me what one single sound did, just now.