Stairs

Last night and this morning, Erica and i watched as Sidney gave a show to Sophia. Who knew stairs could be so much fun. Sidney would climb to the top of the first part of our stairs and then slide down them on his stomach. Phia would be sitting there laughing hysterically as Sidney showed off his trick. Last night I had to get some sleep for my shift at eleven last night. I heard laughter from Sidney and Sophia, and did not think anything of it until Erica called for me to watch was taking place. I came to the top part of our stairs and watched Sidney sliding down on his belly to the floor below where Sophia watched. There I saw Phia on the bottom of the stairs laughing her loudest belly laugh. Every time Sidney would look back and exclaim, “Phia, Phia,” as I watched I could not believe that my two children could get along so well. Sidney and Phia, mostly Sidney, fight over toys and anything that comes between them. It was an awesome sight to see his happening and no fighting taking place. I know that as they grow older there will be more of these types of interactions but it is very special to see them interacting like this now. As I watched this Phia’s laughter kept getting louder and louder and her squeals of happiness followed in that direction as well. After about fifteen minutes of this I unfortunately had to go to bed and I had good dreams replaying in my head that my two children had just done together, without fighting!!

Being a master of history, (I received my master’s in March of 2009), I looked into the sky while I was at my parents home in Ephrata and I noticed there were four contrails of planes that had flown overhead. It got me to thinking about World War Two and the pictures of the contrails of the B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators flying over Germany and the B-29 Superfortresses doing the same over the skies of Japan. If you ever noticed you do not think of them as being dangerous. However, back in the early and mid-1940, seeing those contrails overhead meant some where there was going to be death and destruction. How did the people of Japan and Germany cope with that fact everyday? Or did they cope at all? How did the pilots of those planes cope with their missions or did they not think about what was happening below them? It makes me wonder sometimes how people coped with a simple contrail that passed overhead. I know I can not go back and experience what those people experienced but if I could would I want to? It just makes me wonder, and makes me look at contrails in a different light than what you would normally think.