So I took one of the residents with whom I work to her weekly therapy appointment, which happens to be about 5 miles from our international airport. Usually I spend the hour trying to keep warm in the agency van, but today was a little special.

The weather must have been unusually strong high up, because the planes were flying unusually low. And I was smack-dab under their flight path. So rather than huddling up in the van, heat up high, I stood out in the wind staring up at the sky like a little kid, watching the planes.

I'm typically terrified of airplanes... flying, that is. I thought I had conquered most of that fear in August after a six leg, round-trip trek across the U.S. to meet my fiancé's family. But then there was Sept. 11th... of course. And as irrational as it is for me to fear flying based on what happened to those poor four airliners full of people, I know it will be very difficult for me to ever go up in the air again.

But this was different... this was almost intimate. As I stood staring up, a plane would fly over me--so slow. It seemed to be hovering, as if it could drop out of the air at any moment and fall down next to me. And so low that I could make out every detail of its underside. I felt like waving to the passengers inside, knowing that they could see me, as if telling them that they were almost there--wherever it is that they're coming from. They were safe. I nearly waved like a little child who waves at busses and trucks and boats and the like, until I had a very grown-up and self conscious moment and feared what others would think of me. I damned that grown-up part of me then, but I listened to it nevertheless.

And the plane would hover for a second more... then brake, with twin streamers of black smoke, and swoop off toward the airport. Then another came... then another.

And then I grew cold, so I retreated to the van and warmed up. And I thought. Something so ordinary and little as what had just happened instilled me with such wonder and joy for a brief moment, and I remembered what it was like to be a child again.

The last flight I took, on the way home from meeting my soon-to-be family, positioned me next to the Big Dipper. I looked over my sleeping fiancé and out the window, and there it was... riding shotgun. I stared at it and it stared back--and I had my first brush with the awesome impact of the hugeness of space. Being so high in the air yet so far away from what was floating next to my window... something so huge I could see it, yet so far away I would never reach it...made me feel my smallness. But it followed me home, nonetheless, and that somehow made me feel very safe and reassured. About what I'm still not sure. But it was beautiful.

Orion is also flying low and slow in the winter sky tonight, and that too somehow makes me feel safe.

Sometimes I think about the world and the universe and humanity and all and, instead of thinking about the negatives and scary parts and broken bits, I'm filled with awe. This is an incredible life we lead and an amazing place we call home.

Amazing.