Somewhere in Between~

       I'm on an airplane, circling, circling, circling; the repetitiveness of the movement, mind-numbing.  The plane never seems to be going anywhere.  I peer through the window, and as if I'm looking through the long lens of a telescope, I see a woman below, on planet Earth.  She is busy going about her day, doing laundry, cleaning house, checking email, running errands.  She laughs, she cries, she's bored, she's excited.  All human emotions are observed as I watch her.  She seems quite happy, and appears to have all she could ever want, and more.  As I'm about to look away, something catches my attention.  I see a dreamy, faraway look in her eyes that I hadn't noticed before.  I wonder…what is she thinking? Why the absentminded smile on her face?  With one last look, I'm startled with recognition…it's me!  It's a dream. I'm on the plane, and on the earth at the same time.  Three hundred and fifty days a year, I feel like I'm aboard a plane, circling over my life, in a holding pattern.   It's not that my life is uneventful, or unimportant, but sometimes the predictability of it, lacks a sense of wonder and surprise.  No matter how hard I try, I cannot recapture the patina, the stunning beauty, the graceful elegance, of a city I love far, far away.  As the last page is torn out of my date book, it's September again.  At just the right moment, the plane banks gradually into a turn, flying through a puffy cloud.  I look over at my seatmate, the love of my life.  We smile and clink our glasses of French champagne together.  Finally, the plane is heading east, to the city we love, to the city we've been aching to return to…Paris, France.