For many, they will remember what they were doing or where they were March 13, 2020. I know I remember. It was the Friday before March break. The kids were finishing school for March break (yes I know, it just ended this week), and those of us in the travel industry were witnessing the closures of every border in the world. That night I had a horrible experience as the shelves of Walmart were bare, every aisle worse than the one before.

Then I went to work the following day. I helped clients book flights home from Spain as the borders were closing all around them. Call after call, I was there. Much like I was on September 11, 2001.

For those who work in tourism, travel agencies specifically, they will always remember the where, when, why of everything they did on that day in our history. I remember that the information was so confusing, much like it was in March. We would hear, planes are falling out of the sky. There were at least six planes, no eight. It was impossible. And then it was silent. All the planes were out of the sky and we were all left in shock and disbelief.

It didn’t quite happen that way in March. Planes kept landing in Canada and people were all trying to get home before getting stranded where they were. While the rest of us crawled in our homes, many were just trying desperately to get back to theirs.

The skies were never totally silent during Covid, but they were very quiet. When I lived at my parents house, and at my condo, we are on the flight path to the airport. In peak flying time, we used to sit on the porch at the house and we could look at our watches, every 90 seconds a plane flew over the house. On the days after 9/11 there was silence. I never really understood the saying, silence is deafening until that time.

A few weeks ago I was out for lunch on the patio of Lone Star by the airport with a friend from my travel agency. On that bright sunny day we heard a large plane coming in for landing. We looked at each other and smiled. The sounds of planes is something that a lover of travel appreciates. It was an unspoken understanding about wanderlust.