Rising Above It All.......finally

I got MY life back!!!



Last year, 2008, was an extraordinary year for me, no matter which way you look at it. Gotta great job that makes me a professional airport bum, moved to Houston, mom was diagnosed terminally ill, she died on Mother's Day after a visit with her, I had to take guardianship of my beautiful 96 year old grandmother to insure that she stay safe in a nursing home and not go back to my evil uncle who kept her folded in the bed like a taco so he could collect her social security checks, I catch my breath from that and Hurricane Gustav hit my unsold house in Louisiana, throwing a tree through the roof, while cleaning up the Louisiana house and having the tree removed, Hurricane Ike hit my house in Houston..................and did I mention that I travel 38 weeks a year? It's no wonder my body gave out and I have diabetes now, I have been in Fight or Flight mode for so long. It's not just that I lost my mother this year but in the last 7 years, I have lost 2 brothers and both parents leaving me with one suicidal brother and my Sun left in this world. I don't say this to impress or depress you, life is what it is and sometimes it...well, it just sucks!

Many great things have happened because of this terrific job, the best being that I was only 7 hours away from my mother in her last days and I could spend the weekends with her. And during those drives, the Texas Blue Bonnets lined the road and made the world a little softer, a little more promising. But there has also been a down side to the job. It's hard to start a social life when you are gone all the time. I don't have a strong social support in a new environment. I have not been able to fly my plane cause I have not had the time, now that I am diabetic I have not yet got the medical sign off to fly again. When I was first diagnosed it just seemed like another block to my flight path, I thought maybe I should sell Peg. I spent hours in the hangar laying across the seats and the wing trying to figure out why I would be able to achieve my dream of my own aircraft and never be able to fly it? I decided that it happened that way so that my mother could at least see that my dream came true. She never did get to see Peg, only pictures and the stupid glazed eyes and smile I get when I talk about my plane. She was proud.

It's almost a year now since my mother died. The Blue Bonnets are blooming again and I began to wonder about the promise that I felt last year as I saw them on the way to my mother's. My buddy Craig called to say he was going to fly to Brenham with his girlfriend for lunch, it was time for me to go and see how my plane flew.

Let me explain Craig. Craig and I were in ground school together in Hammond Louisiana. We talked about going into a partnership on a plane but he moved to Houston. I bought Peg and then shortly after that was offered the position in Houston as Product Integrity Specialist...aka Professional Airport Bum. Life quickly got out of control and I was not able to fly the plane. Planes, people, houses, cars, boats, none of them like to be stagnate and unused so enter Craig. Craig pays for the hangar so Peg is sheltered and he flies the plane so that she doesn't sit and take a set in her seals, condensation on her crankshaft and the molecules of the propeller are properly distributed regularly. I fix it when he breaks it. Not a bad deal for him at all.

So we meet at the hangar and I swear that plane smiles when I show up just as much as I smile.

I have not seen Christy, Craig's sweetie, since the year of 2008 began to fall apart. I am so impressed with her. Bless her heart (we say that in Texas over the age of 40 and I am catching on quick) Bless her heart, she gets airsick and yet she still flies with her sweetie Craig. I can't help but love that kind of devotion, that kind of understanding.

We pull Peg out of the hangar (or as we say it in Louisiana, "we pull Peg out the hangar") preflight her and we are off! I can breathe! I feel the tears begin to fill from my heart to the lump in my throat to my eyes but they don't come out, they just sit there and I remember. I remember what it's like to be just me again. Just me and let the world go below me as I rise above it. I am home. My mother would have been so proud. She would have been worried that I had gone so long without being me. My mother would often comfort me by telling me "It's going to be hard to be you" cause I had so many dreams, so many goals and so many obstacles and she would be just as happy as me when I "got there". If she hadn't died of a broken heart, watching me go through this year surely would have done her in.

So we are off. So you can see that the Blue Bonnets from the air are not that magnificent blue that you see from the road but instead it's a strange grayish, greenish hue that resembles mold on a good cheese. I think of that sense of promise I felt last year when I saw the Blue Bonnets while driving to my mother's and how just like when you see mold on cheese you think something is bad, when it isn't always the case. As we come in on final, there waiting for our landing is a massive carpet of Blue Bonnets and Indian Paint Brushes surrounding the runway like a welcome mat. I am home again. It's good to be me again. I "flew" 109,000 miles last year just with Continental Airlines but that is not flying, that is traveling. Yesterday with Craig and Christy, we Flew! We left it all behind, it was gone and I can see now that the white water is settling into a more manageable life. The magic of Christy? ....Bless her heart....she kept chiming in "someone has their life back....." "Who has their life back?" Christy was the voice of my mother, and I don't even think she knows it.

I flew! I soared! I came home! Lunch wasn't bad either.