There were few things that made my seven-year-old heart fill up with glee like the view from an airplane window.  There are so many good things about that.  You can see the layout of the world from there.  You can count baseball fields and swimming pools in the city, or you can see farmland patterns in the country.  You can see mountains from far, far away and know exactly where the ocean drops off.  You can pretend that you’re an explorer or an architect or a city planner.  Anything seems possible.

With all of those options, my favorite thing to watch through the window was always the clouds.  For what seemed like hours and was probably minutes (remember, attention span of a little kid), I stared at cloud formations through airplane windows.  I actually thought that God and the angels lived up there for a long time (stupid paintings of cherubs in clouds).  I wasn’t concerned for the safety of the angels as we flew through them with turbines; they could fend for themselves.  I was just thrilled to be sharing space with them.

At 6 A.M. tomorrow, I’ll be flying through the clouds, and my heart will be full like it was years ago.  I’ll try to concentrate on my book and be appropriately chatty with the person next to me and sneak in a short nap.  And mostly, I’ll be in awe that the clouds are constantly changing from one beautiful formation to another.   They never cease to amaze me, even as an adult.

I might also pretend that I’m an explorer for a few minutes while we’re over the Rocky Mountains.