had to go around. Men in bullet proof vests

had to go around. Men in bullet proof vests with wires running from their ears stood guard at either end of the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue.

I think the security presence made it impossible to feel that the attack was over and to turn my attention to recovery. They evacuated the Capital building again. People were voicing concerns of germ warfare.

Words like “draft” and “nuclear winter” and “atomic threat” were popping up way too far from history textbooks. They were part of our daily conversation. The Washington Post front-page headlines screamed “War”.

I left work a few hours early on Friday. I needed to go home home, out of DC, back to Mom and Dad, back to Rappahannock. We drove out of the city by the Pentagon, but we couldn’t see the damage from Route 110.

An hour later, when we turned onto US 211, I felt immeasurably better. We drove back into Rappahannock before sunset. It was cool and beautiful and peaceful. The mountains were bright blue; they washed into the orchards and fields perfectly smoothly.

Everything was in calm order. Mom was pulling weeds; the cat was stretched out across her rock. I wasn’t under the shadow of a tall building. I took a deep breath. Until I felt a weight lift as I exhaled, I had not realized how awful I had been feeling all week, how oppressive the mood was.

Here the sun was clear and it didn’t feel ironic or inappropriate. Trees still grow; the mountains still stand. Here I' can tell that life is not destroyed; the world is not irreparably damaged.

We have tragedies and disasters and they mar the face of our world. But in time, it grows over and there is something soothing about that.

The calm that we all felt after the crowds had dispersed on Tuesday, as we walked home after dinner, was, to me, the eye in the calm of the storm. The hysteria of