Fly me to the moon...

I was flying on an airplane for the first time in1967 to visit with Tim and his family in Newnan. Everyone dressed up in their Sunday best for air travel... white gloves, Sunday dress and heels, makeup and hair done just so. It was an Occasion to travel and a Special Occasion to fly.
Our airport was small with only one airline, Southern Airways, and you had to board outside using a stairway on wheels. As I climbed the steps, I turned at the doorway and waved to mama then entered the plane to find my seat. I sat by a window over the wing and buckled up, ready to fly. The airplane was a propeller version and I jumped as they roared into life. The cabin shook slightly as the pilot revved the engines before he began to race down the runway. Trying to look at ease as I held the armrest in a white knuckled death grip, I took deep breaths and felt the plane lurch into the air after hitting every bump in the runway.
All the way to Atlanta I sat and watched the rivets dance in the wing just outside my small porthole of a window. I was transfixed as I contemplated the possibilities of sudden death by air travel and didn’t relax until the stewardess handed out Cocola (southern for Coca Cola) and a small pack of peanuts. Eating and drinking restored my balance a little and I began to survey the ground flying by underneath, trying to figure out where we were in those days before interstate highways. I wanted to fly to the moon and beyond. Flying was fun!
We began to circle the Atlanta airport and I was soon on the ground, walking down the stairs headed towards Tim who stood waiting at the window. No security checks, no ticket needed to wait by the gate to greet your loved ones in those days. As we walked through the terminal to the baggage claim, I had no inkling of the many times I would fly from one end of the country to another, nor did I imagine the flight I would take to meet Tim in Hawaii for his R and R, the last time I would see him alive. Flying would become work and the luster of the magic of the first flight would wear thin.
Nevertheless, when I close my eyes and time travel back to the glorious sunny day when I flew for the first time to meet someone I loved, the feelings of joy and terror come flooding back. Unlimited possibilities, a life stretching out before me, giddy choices made with the heart, loosed from the ties that had kept me bound to the town and farm where I had grown up, flying to Atlanta set me free in more ways than one.
I am now in the developmental stage of young old age and as I look back over my life, there are many places where I have been set free from ties that bind my soul. But my first flight, the first time I saw the green green grass of home from high above, will always be a sweet memory. In Exodus I read about Moses going up on the mountain three months after he had led his people to freedom in the wilderness of Sinai. The Lord called to him and said, “You have seen how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself.” When my soul wings it way home on the wings of an eagle, when I am brought to the One who gave me life, I suspect that memory of flight will comfort me and give me joy just as it has all these years.
Thanks be to God for the times in my life when my feet left the ground I walk on and I took flight, my wings stretched out in the sunlight of God’s love. Set me free to fly again, Lord and I will remember you as I soar to new places through wilderness and oasis alike. Amen.