Twilight on a quiet airplane, thousands of feet in the sky, is a perfect time for reflection. I was up in the atmosphere again headed for the sunshine state for the eighth time this year. My life has become so rushed and blurry of late I need to remind myself as to why I am going back. The flatbeds of gray clouds sit below me with an orangey sky on the horizon letting me know the sun was done for the day. I make it a habit whenever flying in to have an aisle seat and never look out the window. In my younger years I would always occupy a window seat and stare over the puffy ice cream castles in the air and dream. Dream about where I had just been, and where I want to go next. As marriage , kids and career take over our lives, most of us stop dreaming, me included. But on this day, as my chariot of flight hummed through the night, I was ready to dream again.
It was a Sunday afternoon in the autumn of 1984, flying back from Milwaukee, Wisconsin with the world and a lifetime in front of me. I had just been a groomsman in my best friend’s wedding and was heading back to the small, sheltered world I still live in. Even though it was half a lifetime ago, I can clearly see that young man. He was just a boy staring into the clouds. Below the surface he was a scared, lonely, and angry young man without a plan. Outwardly he appeared confident, happy, outgoing, and cocky. This young and immature boy had already met the love of his life but wouldn’t realize that for years. He would go on to leave teaching, coaching, and become an insurance broker. He would eventually get married and raise two amazing daughters. Through ingenuity and hustle he would create more monetary wealth then he could have expected.
Opening my eyes I was gazing at the gray desert of clouds that lay below me. Soon I was going to be reunited with the only person I had shared all my childhood dreams with. The person whom I had the courage to tell what I was going to become, where I was going to live, and all the wonderful things I was going to accomplish. I knew this had much to do with why I hadn’t seen him in 30 years. I was convinced I could never measure up to all those dreams I shared with him. A great novelist, too busy traveling the world, people hanging on my every word, too occupied to have time for a wife and a family. A mysterious jet setter living life large. A man attacking life everyday hard and fast. Writing books and developing characters based on himself and his bawdy adventures.
Now it was completely dark except for a bright strip of fiery sky that lay on the horizon. The airplane was making its’ final descent into Fort Myers . I felt the circle closing . I was coming around to beginning for sure. My childhood best friend, who I have not seen in 30 years has a daughter, Gretchen, and she was getting married and I was going to be there. I had stopped looking back long ago. You cannot change what happened before, you can only learn from it. In so many ways our pasts haunt us. I have always believed, and still do, you can’t go all the way home. But now in the pure darkness, as the plane touched down, I was getting closer. I am nearing peace with who I was and what I have become. As much as my own father, I had wanted Todd to respect me and to be proud me. I step out of the plane into the windy Florida night and finally, I am ready to see my friend again.
