'Til The Cows Come Home

Angels

Tonight. Continental Flight 1050 from Cleveland to New York-LaGuardia.

Tumbleweed could have been blowing through the security checkpoints. The terminal was all but deserted. Not a soul was waiting in line for a Cinnabon. My plane was a third full, at most.

Nobody wanted to fly today.

The flight was smooth and uneventful. They announced our final approach. We made a lot of small, tight circles as we descended and I lost sense of direction. Then the clouds that had so stubbornly clung just above the surface finally broke and New York Harbor was below us.

That's when the entire plane saw them. Two glorious and shimmering beams of light, pouring forth from the ground of Lower Manhattan. They rose from the glittering city around them, which was crystal clear in stark contrast to the murky flight across Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

I've never heard such silence.

We all watched in reverent awe as the towers of light glided beside us. I almost wished we could fly through them and bathe in the glow of days gone by. I imagined that the beams were pathways for those thousands of souls to travel home, that they had come back to visit for just one day, to let us know they were okay.

I wanted the pure, white brilliance that guided them to and from the heavens to wash us clean and give us hope that and that, someday, we would be okay, too.

The beams disappeared behind us. And as the wheels of the plane touched the earth, I cried for those that wouldn't touch it again.

Posted by mak at September 11, 2006 9:26 PM