Going Home


An amazing sensation when a plane rises above a storm, lifts clear of the clouds and suddenly a fierce sun rises in a flawless blue sky.

Below roils a lake of white as big as the ocean, as if the surface of an endlessly churning sea.

There is no sensation of the incredible speed at which we travel, save the occasional shimmy as we cut through turbulent air.


The clouds break a bit as we ride higher on nothing, displaying a world scribbled across with... what... rivers, canyons, great crevices along the faulted world... or maybe just a simple trick of cloud shadow. Some are too straight to be anything but highway, yet it seems at eight miles in the sky a man made path would be impossible to see.


All gather here on this calculated risk, all age, all race, all occupation, all motivation and all of the seven dwarfs. The trip silently binds us, a contract to live or die together.


"Safer than driving," they say. They speak true, statistically. But nothing can change the reality that we hang up here with no net, pretending and drinking our mediocre coffee or brand-unknown vodka as if this is some sort of sadistic cafe with little tiny seats and tables for one-half.


Home. I travel home. I miss my love so much my chest aches as her images play across my mind's eye. I want to squeeze my children so tight they beg me to let go. A trip away once in a while is good for the sake of perspective, I think. The time abroad tends to focus my own existence. More than anything, it screams at me how lucky I am and how much I need to appreciate the love, the joy and the passion saturating me every day.


I have no complaints.

I have no regrets.

I have only fortune.


The plane begins to turn us earthward already on this short flight; just a jump across states. The storming sea of clouds has returned and rises up to meet us, to take us gently into its soft arms, welcome us back to our own world.


Touch down, and as one our anxieties vanish, lives slipping back into gear. We disembark, separate (although somehow still bonded in a summer camp sort of way) and seek out those we love.

Thanks for reading, off to write!

Cheers,

Casey

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