-The God’s Eye View-

The airport is busy. Lines spilling out of the bathrooms busy. But we still manage to find a table, and drink some coffee. A woman is playing guitar and singing. Songs I know. I can’t recall their titles, but I know the tune of them. She puts her own deep, somber twist to them. I put some money in her can. She smiles at me while she sings, and I smile back.

We make our way to our gate. We take the underground subway to another building. It is far less crowded and we settle into the short wait. We hear some more singing. A sort of humming, opera moaning. A man with an epic mustache and a twinkle in his eyes is walking around the seats at the gate, singing while he also waits to board. “He better not be doing that all thru the flight…” I mutter to my father as the man does a fly by of us.

The plane is hot, and small, and I immediately take note of all the kids. Toddlers and babies. Baby in front of us. Baby behind and to the right of us. Toddlers across from us.. Its like my worst nightmare. Surrounded by kids in a small confined space.. We can’t take off soon enough.

The plane finally starts moving. Slowly. Out my window I see plane after plane take off. I realize we are in a circus parade of planes, waiting in line to take off. I watch maybe 10 planes in front of us shoot off before we finally turn the corner for our turn. As we do, I see some 10 more planes in line behind us, all different sizes and colours. The grass ripples as the last plane before us rumbles skyward. And then we do the same.

And the rumble of the engine isnt enough to drown out the wailing babies and screaming toddlers and somewhere… somewhere, a yowling dog…

I lose myself out the window. …around the wing, cuz we have a perfect view of the wing in all its glory. And I can almost imagine the creepy faced monkey in one of the William Shatner episodes of the Twilight Zone. But there is no monkey on this plane, to wreak havok and tear apart the wing.

We shoot towards the clouds, resting on top of the atmosphere, like île flottante, floating islands. They are whipped and wispy, like cotton candy for the Gods.

And then, once above them, we even out. The crying and wailing subsides, and it is here, 35,000 feet in the air, defying the laws of nature, that we see our world from a God’s eye view..