Quiet afternoon

This morning as I was driving from my house to Sue's, there was a huge explosion six blocks from where I live. I kept driving east, but repeatedly I had to pull to the right, first for a fire truck, then another, then for seven speeding police cars followed by an ambulance, more police cars, and a third fire truck. My first thought was that there had been a terrible automobile accident. Then I wondered--a bomb? It was a construction accident, a gas line was ruptured and then exploded. Eight people were injured, none seriously. Immediately I thought of Paris, Aleppo, Mosul, Gaza, Yemen: all the places where bombs blast suddenly and people's lives are ended or altered forever. Legs lost. Eyes. Parts of fragile human bodies.

I was on my way to Sue's house because she's still flat out with virus or flu or whatever it is, but I thought it would do her good to get out of the house. I wanted to drive her to Sauvie Island for a change of scenery. I thought she could just ride peacefully in the car, see something beautiful, no effort. Once the sirens had died down, we decided to go on with the plan.

Sauvie Island was quiet. Few cars. Four people fishing off a pier at the Gilbert River. We both took about twenty photographs, and we ended up blipping the same place, almost the same moment. Now we're back at her house, I'm cooking spaghetti, and we will watch the last of these presidential debates after dinner.