I woke up this morning fulling expecting R & R--to regret and retract--or in other words, to come to my senses. After my prerequisite morning stretches for my over forty body, I threw open the cocoon of my covers, felt the frigid morning air hit my flannel pajamas, and headed resolutely for the curtains. Metal O's slid along metal rods, canvas curtains rustled as they folded fan-like to the sides, and accordion shades swished as they slid to half-mast, revealing sky at sunrise.
Through the rectangles of window clouds blushed against an unabashedly turquoise sky--a painted scene. Who hasn't heard this description, or similar, of sky, a thousand times--without relishing the thought of it! It's a registered thing of beauty, a copyright of nature. Something to be admired. Yet, this morning it was not a distant masterpiece but a part of me.
Yesterday I decided--or rather the decision dawned--that I would like to be a pilot. Like so many others who take the course of becoming a pilot I have always been thrilled by the sight, sound, smell and feel of an airplane. Always eager to go to the airport as a child, I was the first in the taxi. When I was able to drive I made a field trip with friends to San Francisco International Airport, to write and sketch. Even when I lived with a pilot in-training it didn't dawn on me to learn to fly myself. Fear got in the way of my fun, so I stuck to the passenger seat--gleefully. Even now I live about a mile from a local airfield and can hear the mail plane's run-up on it's twice-daily journey in and out. I pass the airfield almost everyday and when my children are in the car we always check for "action at the airport."
Somehow, yesterday, forty-two years into life under the sky, I actually visualized myself flying through it, just a plane and me. I had registered for the Women in Aviation International Conference in Long Beach, CA. After paying the dues to join WAI and the fees (I don't have) for the conference, I set about to convince myself of why I'd done so. Thinking practically, I navigated to the scholarships link. There I read page after page about past scholarship recipients and their life paths. I was inspired. When I saw a number of women in midlife pursuing changes in careers for aviation, I then pictured myself in their shoes, pursuing the pilots seat.
So, for now I wax eloquent about the skies while snug on my sofa, trying to digest aeronautical terms, including--airman.
(Originally published 1/12019 by author on her blog The Passage.)
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