Blue, Blue Sky

Twenty-five years ago, I was nine years old and had never been on an airplane. Yes, I had laid on the hot summer sidewalk and stared up at the sky and wondered where those big metal birds were heading but never had I gotten a tiny bag of peanuts or a blue pill-y blanket or said Sprite, please, when the flight attendant asked if I wanted anything.

My first flight was from Charlotte to New York City, and I still remember my first glimpse of the city's skyline and how it knocked the air out of me, how I told my mom this is where I want to live. Even now, after living here almost a decade and a half, flying in, that view gets me.

How strange that this afternoon I'll be getting on a plane with Eva--not even twelve weeks yet--and we'll be flying away from this city and out to Oklahoma. All that sky, sky as far as the eye can see. I wonder what I'll tell her when we get there, how I'll explain the vastness and the quiet, how I'll explain all that blue.