Hope Flies

Yesterday, I spent a good portion of the day on YouTube, watching videos from Marlo Donato (Love) and Matt Allen G.    Last night, hubby and I spent a little time talking about an unrelated subject – emotional distance.  That combination seemed to create the setting and content for the dream from which I just awoke.

Basically, in my dream, hubby and I were in a big gymnasium with lots of people around.  I got the impression it was a neurological-testing center, and I had an appointment that afternoon.  A young man escorted us about halfway up the bleachers, sat us down, and started to do a weird test on me where I had to drink water in front of him.  The water was in a clear glass with black lines and numbers etched onto the outside.  Strings were attached to the bottom of the glass, and this man held the other end of the strings while he watched me drink.  After the test, he diagnosed me with MS, turned his back toward us, then asked over his shoulder, “Did I say it okay?  Too blunt?”  I assured him he’d announced the news just fine and that I’d known of it for a long enough time that I wasn’t shocked.  All was well.

When we stood to go, it was evening and the gym had pretty much cleared of people.  We made our way down the bleachers and were walking toward the exit when an older man came out of a side-room and encouraged us to, “Come in for a bite; eat before you go.  We have frozen yogurt.”  We followed him into a little cafeteria with white walls, white floor, and white chairs pushed against white, round tables.  I wasn’t hungry, but I sat at one of the tables while hubby chatted with the man by the yogurt machine.

On the table was a random brochure about neurology.  I picked it up.  On the back, there was an advertisement for the U.S. Air Force.  In the accompanying photo, a pilot in uniform stood by a fighter jet and both were silhouetted against a beautiful sunset.  I reclined on the table top, curled up, and began sobbing great tears all over the white, cold surface.  I’m sure that wasn’t very sanitary for the future, unsuspecting diner.  Graciously, the dream ended there.

F-16 Fighting Falcon (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Rasheen A. Douglas)

******

I have the type of personality where I’m not publicly demonstrative with my emotions.  As people generally think of the males in our species doing, I go off somewhere alone to sort out my feelings.  In other words, when I need to don sack cloth, roll around in ashes, and wail to my Creator, I run to some isolated cave to do it.  Always have.  This dream was surreal in many ways, but most especially at the end where I’m big-time bawling in a public place as I’m sprawled across a sticky table!

The important bit is what triggered the meltdown.  I was quite fine with the diagnosis until I saw that brochure advertisement.  

You see, I’ve never thought dreams could truly die; their fulfillment just gets postponed to a later date.  So, I’ve held out hope for decades.

When I was in my early teens, I knew what I wanted to be when I got out of school – a jet fighter pilot.  When an Air Force representative came to career day at school, I spent at least an hour at his booth, interrogating him about how to achieve that goal and wanting him to explain every detail about Air Force life.  

Air Force Academy Chapel, Winter (U.S. Air Force photo/Mike Kaplan)

Afterward, I wrote a letter to the Air Force Academy, asking if they’d accept me.  I got a letter back that advised I come there as soon as I graduated from high school.  So, that was the plan!

Then, in high school, I met an Air Force recruiter.  I told him of my goals.  He saw my eyeglasses and asked if I could drive a car without them.  I smiled and told him I probably could but it wouldn’t be a wise decision, for me nor for bystanders. 

“Well, then,” he said in a gentle but matter-of-fact tone, “The closest you’ll get to the planes is maintenance.  You won’t be able to fly them.  You need to be able to see well enough without the glasses.  Just our regulations.”

Unacceptable conclusion.  Maintenance was near the planes, but not flying them myself.  I wanted to know who made such rules and why, how they could get changed, and where I need to write to start hammering at whichever big-shot needed worn down until she or he could see reason.

Probably to send me on my way, he said, “Who knows.  Maybe someday they will relax the rules a bit, but I wouldn’t count on it.  Meanwhile, you can probably be a private pilot.” 

I let him go.  I’m surprised I didn’t tag him before the release.  A straight-talking recruiter is a find!

First year of community college:  I signed up as a writing major, but I was truly just waiting around for the Air Force to understand the error of their rules and let me into the cockpit.  So, I made use of my time by taking the Flight Instruction 101 class and studying brochures about missionary aviation.

I had until the end of my 32^nd year of life.  After that, their age rules would keep me out.  So, I had decades of scanning Air Force news and accosting recruiters about any possible rule changes about vision issues.  Who knows, I’m probably on some sort of watch list and now you are, too, simply because you’ve read this far.  Yeah, sorry about that.

Anyway, I kept wondering if there’d be a war where our nation would get desperate and allow people like me to fly their costly planes.  Perhaps the rules would relax enough I could fly the cargo planes, then I could sweet-talk my way into a jet fighter cockpit.  Maybe I’d somehow win an air-show contest to get to ride in a two-seater, the pilot would black out, and it would be up to me to fly us safely to the ground; then, as a reward for my good behavior, they’d bend their rules and invite me in!  

Thunderbirds (Air Force photo/Ray McCoy)

The year I turned 33 was impactful.  My cherished, earthly father died that year.  And, my dream of being a jet fighter pilot took another step down.  

Notice I didn’t say the dream died.  Oh no.  The Air Force could still relax rules.  Or, all the younger people may somehow disappear.  Then, they’d have to resort to the near-sighted, older folk faithfully waiting in the far pasture.  Yup, and I’d be there for them!

Painting by ART-fromthe-HEART on deviantART.

*****

At the end of this video that likely sparked last night's dream, as I saw Matt walk away from the camera, cane in hand, I whispered a prayer, “He looks like me at that age.  He’s so young to be going through this.”

I watched ahead in his videos to find that he fought his way out of a wheelchair and back to hiking without a cane!  Yay!  Great job!

I was young, too, when I was fighting my way out of a wheelchair and away from cane-use.  Because of last night's cafeteria-meltdown dream, I’ve been looking back at this period in my life and I realize that part of the reason I fought MS was because I didn’t figure the Air Force wanted pilots who couldn’t walk unaided.  If a person couldn’t fly if they needed visual aids, they certainly couldn’t fly if they needed mobility aids.

Where hope lives, dreams don’t die.  Perhaps they get delayed.  Even when reality starts solidifying, for me, a dream doesn’t die.  It simply gets modified.

Granted, it is unlikely that all healthy people under the age of 33 with 20/20 vision will disappear long enough that the Air Force will have to search the back pasture for cockpit-fillers.  Granted, it is unlikely I’ll win a contest to plop myself into the front seat of an F-16B, the backseat driver blacks out, and I must be the hero bringing us down in one piece.  Granted, they probably wouldn’t even let me polish the fuselage now for fear I’d wander off and accidentally fall into a cockpit and just happen to land on all the right buttons to close the canopy, buckle myself in, and fire up the engines.  Hey, I’m dreaming here!  Give me some slack!

Okay, I’ll grant that reality-odds are against all that happening.  But, the Dream Modification Module is functioning well.  Nobody can stop me from picking up my paints and creating that scene of an F-15E silhouetted against a blazing, evening sky.  Now, if my work gets liked by the Air Force enough and they invite me on base to create some paintings for their cafeteria walls and I just so happen to wander onto the tarmac and accidentally fall into an F-22 Raptor cockpit….well, they just should have known not to park it in my way!