Free Ghost Dance by Carole Maso

gear that would not lower, a flock of birds flying towards the engine. We made intricate dinners the days of my mother’s homecomings with five and six courses and desserts we set on fire. It kept Father’s mind occupied. It kept his thoughts off flying. But I never worried about Mother when she was flying. I was not afraid of the air; I thought, like my father’s arms, it could hold anything.
    “Where are we?” Fletcher gasped, opening his eyes, sitting straight up in his seat.
    “We’re approaching JFK, my friend. We made good time, clear visibility, we’ll be able to watch lots of planes before your mother’s lands. You can hear them already,” my grandfather said quietly.
    “Are the planes bigger than houses?” Fletcher asked.
    “Much,” my grandfather said.
    “Do they have lots of windows?”
    My grandfather nodded.
    “I bet you can see inside the clouds,” Fletcher murmured.
    My grandfather patted Fletcher’s dovv nv head.
    “I’d like to be a pilot, Grandpa,” he said. He started up his motor as my grandfather pulled the large soundless Oldsmobile into the parking lot.
    “Sure, Fletcher,” my grandfather said, taking his tiny hand, “you can be a pilot if you want.”
    The airport whirled around them. Everything seemed to be moving: ticket lines, conveyor belts, escalators, clouds. Fletcher, dizzy with excitement even before seeing one plane, dashed around madly, taking off and landing, taking off and landing until he collapsed in a plastic airport chair in a section where people were waiting to board.
    I imagine the travelers as Fletcher saw them: adventurers, embarking on unknown voyages in these fantastic machines; all faith, all wonder. Fletcher must have studied them closely, the lucky children who got to go with their parents, the old people en route to warmer climates, those from other countries, the lost, the disoriented, those who had begun their trip at one time and ended up twelve hours later at the same time, somewhere across the world.
    My grandfather and brother stepped onto the motorstairs and were taken to a large observatory window. Over the intercom announcements were being made, “Eastern flight 107 to Miami departing from gate 19.” “National flight 53 arriving at gate 12.” “Aer Lingus,” my grandfather read off a flight bag which raced by. Al Italia, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Pan Am—the various stripes and colors of the airlines blurred together. The announcements continued. Propellers whirred.
    My grandfather and brother were not part of the group that hurried. They floated around the airport in slow motion, it seemed, and watched stewardesses fly by, ticket agents, anxious travelers.
    That day my mother’s plane, Air France flight 446 from Paris, was delayed eight hours. Luckily, my father, always the one to imagine the worst, was not there. My grandfather and his small student of flight did not mind the wait at all. All day, then evening, then through the starry night, they sat in front of the large airport window pointing at the sky, getting up now and then to have snacks in the snack bar, then returning to watch the sleek bodies of planes, noting the particular angles of arrival and departure.
    “There’s Mom!” Fletcher said, suddenly pointing to a gigantic silver and blue plane, all lights, that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
    “Yes, that’s her, all right!” my grandfather shouted. Their faces glowed like the runway’s guiding lights. They possessed the exceptional beauty of those who wait purely, out of love, outside the body, ready to meet the other some where halfway.
    My grandfather thought, as he watched my mother’s plane make its descent, that it was wonderful to love like this. His son in the kitchen, moving towards my mother also as he peeled the ends of the asparagus, had the same thought and for one moment in time father and son were united through love and it made each comprehensible to the other.
    Inside, my mother collected the