Yesterday, I crossed half of the still-frozen United States and later half of the mythical Atlantic in two separate iron birds, whose near-hubris ability to wrest from nature what humans were not vested with (the power of flight), will never cease to amaze me.
How exactly does a thousands-of-pounds-heavy airplane lift into the air and remain aloft? I try not to think about it too much when I'm actually in one, but I'm still a child-in-wonderment when it comes to knowing why it works.
Today, the tropical Puerto Rican sun streams in through the windows of my parents' home, making its beneficent presence known by warming and coloring in bright yellow everything it touches: my skin, the walls, the floors, the cement building and the glass windows that willingly reflect it, like the eternal flame of some ancient god that will not be forgotten.
Today, the miserable virus-induced cold that had ailed me for nearly a week in still-freezing Ohio is magically almost gone, as if all I needed was to set foot in my warm patria, the island that holds half of my life in its memory, the island that will never be forgotten, to feel and to be made whole again.
Ahhhh, my body sighs in contentment, this is what The Sun was meant to do. That other one, that meek and powerless sun of my life up North, cannot possibly be the same oversized star or have been worshipped as the same god. This Caribbean Sun tells me that I've stepped through some magical threshold into a totally different reality.
1 comment:
Hooray! I'm so glad you're home and warm and getting well. And yes: take-offs have been known to make me cry. I love flying, love it.
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