Look, up in the sky

Airplanes and airports have always been my happy place.

I grew up within spitting distance of LaGuardia Airport. When I was a kid, for fun my friends and I would bike over with a picnic lunch, lie on our backs and watch as the planes flew just hundreds of feet overhead in for a landing. We'd count the planes and imagine where they were flying in from.

Once we got adventurous and biked over to Kennedy Airport. It was gigantic. Back then you could go inside and walk around. Oh, the wonder of watching people coming and going. The Arrivals and Departures were straight out of our geography books. Honolulu. Cleveland. Paris.

My first plane trip was to Atlanta. I had my teddy bear, Freddy, with me. I was in high school. I was not embarrassed. If we were going down in a fiery crash, Freddy was going with me.

No matter what city I lived in, the airport was a key part of my life from lunching near Buffalo International Airport to jogging alongside LAX's property.

I don't live near a major airport anymore. Instead, I live on the flight path to and from Europe. When I see planes they are 35,000 feet or so in the air. At night when it's quiet, I can hear the jet engines overhead. I look up and eventually I can see a slow-moving light headed east among the stars. Before long, it will be out over the Atlantic and I will be asleep.   

In the daytime there's practically a conga line of planes high in the sky as one westbound jet stream disappears and another appears. Another Atlantic crossing complete. Welcome to the United States. 

These days the skies are quiet. So when I saw this airplane and its exhaust gasses fading across the sky, I had to take a photo. 

Coronavirus has changed so many things including what constitutes beauty these days. 

A plane in the sky. A nurse wearing a face mask. A supermarket worker gathering shopping carts in the parking lot. All beautiful.