Helicopters

We were taking a long walk today when the air was riddled with the sounds of helicopters. Even one helicopter up here seems to rattle your teeth, but imagine five huge military helicopters fully armed with all sorts of things that looked like missiles and guns and torpedoes and what not -- just very very big and very very scary looking swooping down over you on a sunny afternoon. I don't know how people in war zones keep their sanity.

I was pretty certain we were in no danger, but it was still jarring. About ten minutes later, three more flew over. I don't know where they were coming from, or where they were going, but these helicopters were designed for killing. There was no doubt about that.

Talk about feeling small and totally vulnerable. I cannot imagine where we would have been able to hide from them had they been after us. They fly so low that you can see the people in them and their blades make the trees move.

It just made my heart ache to think of the people who have been attacked by these for real, the children who have grown up under the threat of things like this when they should be playing ball in the street and dolls in the grass.

One of my old music teachers told me about issuing her students Mickey Mouse Gas Masks and watching children running from the buzz bombs on their way home from school during world war II. This is the closest I have ever come to understanding what they might have been feeling.