I Have A Plane To Catch

Even the sky's not the limit

I have a plane to catch.

It’s the mid 1960s, and I’m standing outside our house on a dirt road far out in the country, on the border of New York and Pennsylvania.

Not many people come by our isolated outpost on a typical day. When they do, I know them. They are poor farmers and construction workers and housewives in pockmarked pickup trucks and rusted cars rumbling by amid clanking metal and a cloud of dust, in a hurry to get somewhere else.

I always wave at them and wonder where they’re going. If I haven’t seen them before I follow them with my eyes and think they don’t belong here, and I wave, warily.

On this day there’s a new noise—a low hum coming from a tiny dot in the sky just over the horizon. I watch the dot get bigger and listen to the hum get louder as it comes toward me.

When the dot begins to take shape, I see it’s a plane with two sets of wings, one on top of the other. When it flies overhead, I see the plane is red and has white stars on the underside of its wings.

The plane is flying low over the treetops and I think I can see the person flying it. I wave, just like I do to the people in the trucks and cars barreling down the road. I wonder, can the person in the plane see me? Is he going to wave back at me? Where is he going? Why is he flying over me? Why today?

Then the plane’s wings waggle back and forth as if it’s waving back at me. Which I later learn is exactly what he’s doing.

I run after the plane as it continues on its way. I run past where our trailer and my aunt and uncle’s trailer used to be before my father built our house. I run through fields of tall grass and hay, through briars and brambles and thorn bushes, through oak trees and ash trees and birch trees in the hedgerow, through a small stream, and up and down steep hills and muddy embankments. Always with my eyes and ears tuned to the sky as the plane again becomes a distant dot and the hum fades.

Why do I run?

I run because I believe I can catch the plane. I run because I’m sure it’s going to land in the next field, or the field after that, or the one after that. I run because I think the pilot is friendly because he waggled his wings. I run because I think the pilot will give me goggles and a scarf and a leather bomber jacket and a leather hat with ear flaps and he’ll put me in the seat behind him and off we’ll go like Snoopy chasing the Red Baron.

I run because I’m an innocent little boy with a wild imagination and unrestrained creativity and big dreams and brash boldness and a belief that anything is possible.

I run because I don’t yet know that all but a glimmer of that innocent little boy will survive the fear and beatings and bullying and alcoholism and drug abuse and drug dealing and violence and guns and animal cruelty and poverty and crime and racism and anti-semitism and misogyny and xenophobia I have to overcome.

When I discover I’ll have to endure all those things I’ll run because I’ll want to get on that plane and fly away as far and as fast as I can and never return.

But right now, because of the faint glimmer inside me, I believe I can touch the sky.

As the years go by, thanks to my mother and some special aunts and uncles and teachers and coaches and friends and therapists and a pastor and my father-in-law and mother-in-law and reading and writing and meditating and praying and theatre and film and art and music and traveling and volunteering, that tiny glimmer will do more than survive. It will grow and become a roaring fire of drive and resilience and courage and empathy and honesty and physicality and talent and generosity and knowledge and creativity and humor and humility.

That roaring fire will also produce the exact opposite of some of those things, and I will rely on them until I learn they no longer suit me. Especially the last word of the previous paragraph which, it seems, I still need to work on since I noted it as a virtue.

In short, I will become fully human. Not the demigod I think I had to be to survive. And not the worthless person I was told I was. I will become something in between—a human who is trying to have more virtue than vice, and if I’m lucky, make the world a better place.

That innocent little boy that was full of wonder may never have caught the biplane, but I have now flown all over the world and dome many rewarding things in the process. I’ve been a husband, father, corporate executive, consultant, author, playwright, essayist, journalist, producer, voice actor, two-sport college athlete, and lead singer in a band. I’ve even written lyrics for songs that were recorded and released.

Through it all, despite the trauma and damaging messages I received growing up, and the complex post-traumatic stress disorder that took hold as a result, I’ve learned the life I’m living has value, even when I’m not sure it does because of the self-doubt and “imposter syndrome” with which I sometimes struggle.

That innocent little boy inside has taught me, through broken hearts and dreams come true, that I have value simply because I am. And that’s enough.

I am enough.

And I still want to catch that biplane.