Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: DREAM (01/02/20)
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TITLE: Sky's The Limit | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
01/06/20 -
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My grandmother, Jessie Lynn Maddox, swallowed every moment of air time given to the pioneer aviatrix. Earhart believed, taught and modeled the idea that women could do anything and Jessie believed her. I still have a picture of my young grandmother sitting in a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier, aviator goggles in place and pointing toward the sky.
“Sky’s the Limit!” she told me every Christmas when our family would take the journey cross country to see her. She’d pull out her scrap book and show me the evidence of how she proved that.
“Why do you believe that?” I asked as a precocious eleven-year-old.
“Ol’ JGM Junior wrote about it and I experienced it,” she replied, rapping her knuckles on the scrap book.
“Who’s ol’ JGM Junior?” I asked.
“What?” she said, flipping through the pages. “You don’t know John Gillespie Magee?”
“Is he a former crush of yours from school?”
“Now, you’ve got me dreaming,” she said with a smile. “Listen to this.” She closed her eyes, tilted back her head and raised her hand to shoulder height. “‘Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of.’”
She hesitated, lost in the visions the words created in her mind.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“No, there’s more,” she said. “I like the ending when it says ‘I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace where never lark or even eagle flew. And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
We both sat silent, stared out the big bay window of her living room and watched the dissipating entrails of a jet splitting the clear blue heavens.
“Did you ever reach out and touch the face of God when you were flying those jets?” I asked.
She closed the scrap book album and rapped the cover gently. “I dreamed of it,” she said. “There were days when I felt like he was carrying me across the skies. Like, there was no one alive except he and I. My prayers didn’t even need words to communicate.”
She stretched for her walker and I held it firm while she strained to stand on wobbly legs.
“Have you ever felt that on earth?” I asked.
“Once!” she said, winking as she slowly moved her walker toward the kitchen. “The day your grand-daddy and I parachuted out of a plane together.” She stopped for a rest, breathing heavily. “I knew that when we landed, he would pop the question and make all my dreams come true.”
“Weren’t you afraid?” I asked.
Again, the smile. “I met your grand-daddy in the Sunday School choir and he could sing like an angel. One Christmas we got to be Mary and Joseph together and to sing a duet. He took my hand while we sang and from that moment on, I knew I would never be afraid again as long as he was with me.”
“How come I’ve never met grand-daddy?”
A deep sigh emerged as she pointed toward a picture of a young man standing by a Spit-fire. “The war came. I couldn’t fly because I was carrying your mother. He had no reason not to go.”
“What happened?” I asked in innocence.
“Somewhere over the Pacific he disappeared.” She shuffled forward a few more steps. “I think he either found Amelia’s plane and stopped to help her or he reached up and touched the face of God and never wanted to come away from that.”
“You mean he died, don’t you grandma?”
Pivoting in place, she plunked down on her walker. Fixating me with her steely grey eyes she declared with full conviction. “No, child! Your grand-daddy is more alive than ever. One day we’re going to skip across the clouds again and this whole life will seem like a dream that’s come and gone.”
“You really believe that, don’t you grandma? How can you be so sure?”
She pointed at her worn old Bible. “I read it in the book. Now, it’s your turn.”
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