I remember the first time I flew.
Late bloomer. I was fifteen the first time I was lifted off the ground beyond a leg’s leap and I had a window seat. The engine roar, the movement of a plane carrying us and the impossible to understand metaphysics that went into flying. Without blinks, I took in the sky. The bird’s angle, the proverbial view of God’s eye, and I rose into a state of heroine-like euphoria. My pen flew furiously across the page as I wanted to jump up and scream at the people shutting their windows, reading their Newsweek, and seemingly oblivious to the glorious blue we were evaporating into. Leaving the earth behind, all the physical matter that cross stitched together to make what we call our lives was below us, and the only thing separating us from that matter was a window, steel, and some engines that we all assumed were working properly.
In that same journal entry, my thought moved from incredulous (“Why aren’t people’s noses stuck to the window like mine, peering out into the heavens?”) to a spiritual catharsis – now, 17 years later, I would call a nostalgic naivety, thinking adults were too busy to pay attention to little miracles – in which I wrote the sentence, “No matter what happens, I belong to the sky.”
Countless times in the sky later, I wonder what dreams coursed through me, who I thought I was going to be since I belonged to the sky. And I’m not sure if I knew what I meant by betrothing myself to the stratosphere, but, knowing my relentless preference for things existential, I would surmise that I merely wanted to hold onto the feeling of discovery. Of amazement. True, genuine speechlessness; silenced by unfettered beauty. There was nothing more stunning than feeling the world at your feet for the first time.
So pay an extra fee for a window seat. Two reasons.
One.
I like leaning away from the middle person. In case of a nap, the window is the next best thing to a pillow.
(And more importantly.) Two.
I try to relive that feeling of breaking open the virginal wonder. I come close, but it’s not the same.
We may throw snow to cover there were footsteps in hopes to remake the path, but the markings are there. The ground is already trod. The pristine blanket has a ruffle. It’s been done.
Nonetheless, I spend that $12 just in case my mind casually bypasses the “Did This Before” file and I get to re-experience flying for the first time, and I get to slip into an amnesiac state and press my face to the window, trace the clouds with my finger, marvel at the long snakes of rivers, the stencils of our humanity, and remember why at 15 years old I promised that I would always belong to the sky, belong to weightlessness, adventure, unbridled joy and feverish excitement to see what else life has in store for me.
This is what I remember when I see planes, rocketing across the blue road, and say a peaceful prayer of gratitude that even though I cannot buy back that first flight, I can look out those window seats a thousand times, still smiling my secret.
