For people of a certain age, this is a significant day, a day you remember where you were when you heard the news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It is also the last birthday my mother celebrated. She would have been 86 today.
For me, it was sitting beside the piano in our house in Amman, Jordan, listening to her play Chopin. Or maybe Brahms. I don't actually remember the song, only what happens when the VOA, the Voice Of America radio interrupted the program with the news.
I never heard such silence and I had never seen what used to be a group of happy American expats enjoying their time together a moment ago leave in that silence. Or my mother cry like that.
Little did I know what left that living room that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment