The steely rumble descending just beyond our line of sight, a muffled, mechanical roar of engines foreign to me and to most, blindly trusted in faith chased with Xanax to deliver us here, to home.

Seven stories up and the whooshing of modernity falls below, around, through itself in a crisscrossing, cascading emphasis, small calls to attention in a hive of transport. Coming and going, folks below, too, 1,029+ of apartments like ours housing people like us, all home.

Fifteen minutes, door to Philly International offers anxious anticipation of the familiar yet always, for me, more-than-slightly nerve-wracking sounds of departure, always punctuated with some disconcerting grinding or clicking.

"I guess I should've said something...?" said Lauren Taniguchi, 25, of Collingswood, her family, friends, and 150 innocents strewn about in a bloody heap.*

*Am I an optimist or a pessimist to fantasize that fate would leave me suffering in solitude for my aural recognition and continual inaction? Sigh.

Ultimately, knock wood, it never is this, and so we gallivant to deserts, beaches, mountains, ruins, wherever, posing for photos with soundless spaces for post-trip, jocular captions. Fly back, another set of ear pops in the climb back down to the belly-down thump of ground. To humming heaters and heavy doors, to one young, still-squeaky cat and to the primitive hush of snow lain commandingly, indiscriminately over surfaces and crannies alike in their being below, here, at home.