It's not very often that I get to sit by his side, suspended in the sky by what seems an invisible thread, literally watching the world go by. This is his element. Here he is fully alive. Here thousands of hours of experience merge into the rhythm of flight. The cadence of his movement is honed and sure, a powerful gentleness that chisels calm places out of rough wind like water carves stone. His deep voice rolls numbers and phonetic letters in a sort of coded protocol through invisible lines that trace the sky. Engines thrum, needles bounce, gyros spin. This is his world.
An entirely different world than what had been planned. The moment he was born, his life was orchestrated, his occupation was chosen, his destiny mapped out. No matter those keen early interests that made his eyes follow every airplane that crossed the sky. No matter what stirred his soul, what piqued his curiosity. No matter that his fascination with air propelled him to try floating through it with a Glad garbage bag looped under his arms. No. No. No. That's not for you. This is your plan. You will go here and you'll study this, then you'll do this, he was told. This is your life.
Except it wasn't.
One day he stood there and said so. He said he was going to leave and he was going to fly. Right there in the face of crushing anger. Right there in the face of the other man's misfit plan. Right there into the cruel, You'll never make it, he stood.
He grabbed hold of his lifelong dream and didn't let go. Hand over hand, hour after hour, year after year, plane after plane, he climbed, he learned, he grew, he flew. What had been forbidden was now free. He became a pilot, a guide, a navigator, a natural. Caretaker of souls.
I look over and watch as he writes his script across the sky.
.
