Today will be a busy day, I am carrying my friend to the airpost in Charlotte so she can fly across the big pond to see the boyfriend, for a long weekend.
That will be an all day thing.
Then tonight I am going to the Lyric Theater in Blacksburg to see the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So", which I have been looking forward to seeing.
And with me all day, will be the memory and knowledge of something that occurred 10 years ago this very day. My sister and her flying partner flew a Cessna 172 from Langeley Air Force Base to Martinsville, had lunch with me and our mother and Aent, and then my sister took me and our mother up in the plane, into the steely grey sky, the same sky that hangs over the land today.
I had never seen the place I have live most my life from the air, and it took a while to get my bearings, was not until I saw the lake, that insane volume of water sitting so much higher than the surrounding land that I knew what was what. Recognized my high school from the map they gave out the first day it opened, followed the river to Fieldale and made out the brick red foundation of my house thru the trees. Down the river to the speedway, over the old fields where tobacco had once grown, the subdivisions, the factories and mills, now silent.
I will most likely never have that opportunity again. Three months later on an even more steely grey and windy day the two of them took off on a short hop and met with disaster. Since then I cannot bring myself to get in one of them little planes. If it don;t have a jet on it, I can't handle it.