Paper Planes

If you asked me to count up all the hours I spent as a kid making paper planes and launching them from the top of the stairs and every corner of our house — day dreaming of landing in some far away place like in my fave childhood book Where the Wild Things Are, I couldn’t begin to answer. They say impossible is nothing, but you may as well ask me to count all the hours inside each grain of sand in an hour glass — or stretched out on a single beach. These whole lifetimes at rest by the Sea, under bare feet, slipping through fingers and sitting in the palms of hands. Countless.

On days when nostalgia lights up my eyes and drips from my smile, I make paper planes with these kiddies of mine — dreaming of simpler times.
I wonder where in the world they imagine themselves to be as we hurl our planes across the room, watching in wonder at our fleeting flights to see who made it furthest before we glide or nosedive into the ground all too soon.

The sad part, now — I find myself wishing I could launch just me again across the Seas. Untethered, no baggage to declare — like a paper plane finding its way through the Universe and over borders, making a great escape like a woman on the run — colliding into different worlds and experiencing other ways to be that bear no resemblance to this weighty, motherhood life thing I lead.

But, once I get there, inevitably I predict no peace — as my thoughts riot, guilt ridden endlessly. Concerned about whether the kiddies have eaten or had enough sleep, or done that homework that’s due next week, not to mention brushing those sugar magnets called teeth.
I’ll spend countless hours this way, restlessly making paper planes once again. Launching them throughout days that drift into nights as I ‘pretend that air planes in the night sky are like shooting stars’ and fly them skywards like wishes that carry into the next lifetime.

Until one day comes — when I’m finally heading back. Back in time through the Universe, across the Seas and over borders to a place called ‘right now’ — that nostalgia obliges in painting as a pastime paradise. Just trying to get back home to make space for grace to breathe through me, allowing me to begin again and find a way to create more peace just where I am — and where my wild things are.

Before long, we’ll be making paper planes — and flying them like wishes once again.