HomeFlight Lesson – 33
Close your eyes. I have a present for you. No, it’s not your birthday but I wanted to give you something anyway. A before my birthday, birthday surprise. I couldn’t decide what we would like. What would be the perfect gift? You’ll have to tell me if I got it right. I think you’ll love it. No peeking. Hold out your hands. Don’t be fooled by the small size, there’s a treasure inside. Ready? Go ahead open your eyes. Let your present begin.
I have been given so much sometimes I feel guilty. I have had so many incredible experiences I think they’re going to overflow out of my body. Like I’m too full and my life doesn’t deserve anymore but that’s not the way it works. There’s always room for more. The Law of Abundance is more is more. Like Oliver Twist in Dickens’ Workhouse asking, “Please Sir, I want some more?“ You don’t get what you want, you get what you are. What you are is the sum of what you’ve been through, both good and bad, and what you’ve learned from those experiences. My parents understood the roll of presents. We were given gifts but most special occasions were celebrated with trips or adventures. They were the best presents because they never ended. Never broke or wore out, instead they live on in our memories forever. They have a butterfly effect, a gift that keeps giving. My birthday’s coming up on the 17th and I’m looking to give the perfect present.
I think the perfect present is the present of presence, experiencing the ‘best day ever.’ The ‘best day ever’ is different for everyone but it is the comment I hear most from grateful fliers. Joy skipping off peoples’ tongue’s while their words jump up and down in their phrases of praise. “Thank you, this was the best day ever,” or “I had the time of my life flying today, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I can check this off my bucket list.” I don’t have a bucket list. I emptied the bucket of big adventures pretty early in my life. My aspirations are very sweet now. Ease, peace, love, and laughter are all I’m after. There are some places I’d would like to see or experiences I still hope to have but I am content, except for one thing. One good thing I have yet to do and I can’t do it alone.
Last year, in June, I wrote a very strange story titled, The Wish Twin. I shared it with a few people and they all agreed with me, it was very strange. The wise one’s liked it. The story was about finding Buddy in a field, in Nowhere, on the day before my birthday. One wing gone, he was left abandoned and alone by the side of a barn. The plane had been so abused and broken he had forgotten how to believe he could fly. When a little girl, me, comes along and restores the plane’s faith by believing the plane would fly again. Believing enough for two until the plane eventually believe’s it too. I wrote it in ten days, completely in writer crazy-brain. In my story I make a wish that I can fly, and then give my second wish away to the plane. My Wish Twin. I wrote, “When you make a wish you need to make two, then give one away. Everyone has a Wish Twin. Somewhere there is someone who has the same wish as you.”
Trying to figure out why I wrote what I did, I took myself out of the story and put a little boy in it instead. If you want to understand anything, look at it from someone else’s perspective. I’ve been writing a version of The Wish Twin for Vintage Aviation Magazine and I couldn’t finish it. For the last issue I wrote about Blu, stuck in entr’acte, not knowing how the story would end until this past weekend. I was visiting my father and he asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said, “Nothing. I already have everything. I just haven’t got it yet.” I had already bought my birthday present early. I met with my Attorney that morning and asked him to form a non-profit corporation. The Buddy Flights Organization. So I could raise money to donate flights to people who have been through trauma and needed their lives lifted up by the gentle fabric wings of a vintage airplane. A buddy. A friend who believed they could fly, until they did too. Just like Buddy had done for me when I didn’t have my own plane to fly. What I did for Blu when he was such a mess anyone else would have given up on him. Amazing, the gifts our planes give us. Time is sticky, and clocks are tick-tock, tricky. I wrote the story a year ago but my birthday wish just came true. Sometimes you have to very patient and wait for your wish to come true. A wish that is both good and true, is never too good to be true, but you have to believe enough for two.
BTW I wont be writing here again until mid September. I have to finish the story for Vintage Magazine and paint the illustrations. It has a very happy ending. I want to take a break to enjoy the lake and fly Blu. Build a Buddy Flights website, so much to do…Happy Birthday. I hope you like my present. It’s the future and I made it just for you.
