jumpingfish

Sunrise 2

“What’s that?” the boy asked his father.

There was a tremble in his voice. The jet was roaring, and their seats where shaking as they raced down the runway.

“We’re taking off,” his dad said, nodding to the window. “Watch.”

The boy turned and put his nose to the window.

White lines on the runway raced by. And then the airport terminal. And then other jets on the tarmac. And trucks with big tanks on the back. And then their plane pitched upward.

A moment later is was quiet, except for the whining of turbofans.

“Daddy?” the boy said, turning back.

“Keep watching,” his father said, pointing out the window.

It was grey outside. It had rained that day, and dark clouds hung in the sky.

“Daddy, the clouds are getting closer,” the boy said, face still fixed at the window.

“And daddy, we’re in the clouds. And daddy… look!”

At that moment the airplane broke thru the cloud deck and emerged on the other side. White cloud tops passed beneath them. The sky above them was clear. And in the east, the day was dawning.

“Oh daddy,” the boy shouted. “It’s the sun!”

I looked out across the runway and saw five Stratotankers sitting in a row. And a sixth in a hanger. They quietly sat there on the far side of the airfield as commercial planes came and went.

As I stood at the window of the terminal, two of the jets began to move.

Together they left their parked positions and taxied slowly to the end of the runway. As commercial jets landed, they waited to take off.

And when they were next on the runway, they turned and began to roll toward the terminal.

But KC-135s are big planes, and they need a lot of runway, so I figured that from where I was standing, they would just roll by, and I would miss them climbing into the air.

So as the first one turned, I dashed to the other side of gate 12 to another set of floor-to-ceiling windows. And lo, the first jet came roaring past and pulled its nose into the air, just as a Southwest 737 taxied by.

And then the second one followed the first.

Snap. Snap. Snap. My camera fired off rapid shots, catching them as they took off.

Am I allowed to do this? Is someone going to tap me on the shoulder and tell me to stop? Is this a breach of security? Don’t laugh. I’ve been told to put my camera down before as I took pictures out the window of a plane. So I’m wondering and half expecting a reprimand.

But none comes.

The jets take off. I take my pictures. An elderly man several seats down talks to a friend about KC-135s and points out the window. And I put my camera away.

My father took me to the airport, I am told, when I was very young. He took me to watch the airplanes, and I suppose my future was determined from those moments. I have always loved watching airplanes and being in airport terminals with great, broad windows looking out on the airfield, permitting a luxurious view of the takeoffs and landings.

And today was no exception. I stood there at the window watching the airplanes as they rolled by and took off and landed. As others around me ate hurried lunches or listened to music or watched the overhead television sets, my attention was directed outside.

My dad is responsible for this.

But I feel like I did something wrong taking those pictures as those tankers took off. I feel as if there was some kind of rule that I broke.

How sad is it that?

She wore a white sweater and had a pink scarf wrapped around her neck and a fuzzy coat with leopard-like spots. She turned to him as he sat in the window seat writing in a small, gray notebook.

“Is that a journal?” she asked.

He set his pencil down and turned to her.

“Yes it is,” he said. “I’ve kept one for a long time, but I don’t write on paper much anymore.”

She smiled and said, “I don’t keep a journal.”

He nodded.

“You write like my son,” she said. “His letters look just like yours. And he’s left handed, too.”

He looked down at the mechanical pencil in his left hand: Pentel 0.5mm with 2B leads.

“Is he an engineer?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “He’s an architect.”

Thousands of feet below the Southwest Airlines 737, there’s an endless blanket of billowing cloud tops. And there’s a thin sliver of pink in the eastern sky. The sun is rising. Day is coming soon.

To the west, the full moon is setting, just now coming out of eclipse. I dash from one side of the airplane to the other, first looking at the rising sun, then looking at the setting moon.

What remarkable timing. What a remarkable view. And how remarkable is it that the flight attendants haven’t told me to sit down?

At the end of the presentation, the students opened the floor to questions. A man in the back stood up.

He had been a sponsor their work. It was a mission for him: to pass knowledge to the next generation by dropping them into the melée and putting them to work with technologies and software before they otherwise would.

“How did the tools work?” he asked.

One of the students took the mic.

“Fine,” he said. “The tools all worked fine as soon as we figured out how to use them correctly.”

The room erupted in laughter, not only because of the humor of the response but also because of its deep truth.