People With Life

9.

"Ready?" John called to me as I locked my front door and walked eagerly towards him. He was leaning against his jeep, eyes locked on mine, his face animated and full of happy, curious things.

He took me in his arms and pulled me against him, smelling my hair and sighing contentedly.

"Where are we going?"

He just grinned coyly and opened the passenger door for me. He connected his phone to the stereo and we spent the drive listening to and discussing music. He put on the song "Fly Me To The Moon" just as we started ascending the hill to get to the old runway. I caught on quickly.

"No," I said firmly, knowing he was taking me up here to catapult us off the side of the hill.

He just smiled and sang his song.

"I'm not going John," I said stubbornly.

When we got to the top, he put on "Come Fly With Me" and began singing at the top of his lungs.

I couldn't help but grin a little.

"Come on Ani! I've already done it with Marley and Mike."

"Well I appreciate you using Mike and Marley as your guinea pigs instead of me. But this is nuts if you think about it. How do you even know that this runway is the right length or width or if the course is smooth enough or..."

"Because I know things. I've been taught well. Don't worry. I wouldn't be carrying you here if I didn't think it was really safe and if I didn't trust my flying skills, believe me."

He opened the old hangar and there sat a beautiful, old, white plane with a cockpit that could hold just a few people.

"I flew it up here from Portland this morning. You should have been on that flight. So breathtaking."

He taxied it onto the runway as I watched, still standing beside the car he had parked safely under the big tree where it would stay until he returned for it with Mike tomorrow.

He put the plane in position.

Then he got out and walked over to me again. He placed two supportive hands on my shoulders. "Baby, don't worry. Relax. I know what I'm doing. You'll be safe. Trust me, please." He was looking at me expectantly, but I was still deeply concerned.

"But how do you know something bad won't happen while we're up there? You only have so much control over the plane." He took a deep breath and thought intensely for a minute.

"You want to know the truth? You're right. I can't give you a promise that everything will be fine. I can't control everything up there. But sometimes, we have to relinquish control. In fact, we have to do more than that. We have to accept that control is really just an illusion. An illusion we maintain for our sanity, yes. But life, real life, is chaotic. And maybe even meaningless in its chaos. Bad things happen all the time for no reason at all. There will always be things we can't control, like the weather for instance," he said, waving his hand to the sky. "But we adapt, we adjust, we improvise every day and find strength in the chaos and create meaning in life. And when we're brave enough to accept that we can't always have control, we feel true freedom. Because believe me, even though that chaos can be scary and even destructive at times, out of it comes all the great things in life: clarity, joy, beauty, love..." His voice trailed off, slightly breathless from his attempt to convince me, his eyes were pleading and despite my hesitancy, I felt myself being moved by the purity of his enthusiasm.

"Nice speech," I said, cracking a smile.

He grinned as well. "Convincing?"

"Tell me something," I said and he nodded, placing a stray hair behind my ear, looking at me intently, waiting patiently. "What's it like? To be able to fly?"