“Vacation’s ovah suckah,” I’d fiendishly snicker aloud. Maybe the globetrotters were merely returning home exhausted from a grueling business trip. One could only hope!
And then there was the other direction, watching a plane take off, curious where it was headed. A place far, exotic and new. A place warm, familiar and sentimental. I’d assume that some giddy passenger grasping an armrest was glued to their thick window looking down on me. Snickering perhaps.
I learned to whine at a young age. So I know how to make small things big. But nothing can make big things small quite like a plane taking off. How much richer would a man be if he could long linger between the horizon and the heavens, to realize in earnest that all the things he sees aren’t all the things there are?
How could it be that this thing, this big thing that graced the horizon of man, and with loud dignity…could fall small into the size of our attending eyes? I asked, same as you, if the heavens shied blind to this death and disassembly, or if somewhere above the cityscape, the builders and the pilots, a shined eye watched on with fair ubiquity while a small people soon assembled as a big people, and lived with loud dignity. Same as you, I desperately wish to apprehend what measure of meaning faithfully inhabits which measure of moment. I am free and compelled to imagine a reprieve from unrest and uncertainty that begins in a place far exotic and new and ends in a place warm, familiar and sentimental.
One week later, one hour ago I watched one perfect plane shrink into the vast mouth of night. And I asked God to watch over the giddy passenger watching over me.
I asked God to watch over big things. Over small things. Over all things.
Why, it could be, you see, that God covers the cities, the buildings, the
planes and too the men with something unremitting, uninterrupted from the
manifest brilliance of the sun, moon and sky.