& so he'll fly...

Most days, I sit in class in the city and daydream of life in the mountains. I think we all have some place we are always trying to get back to, and you can tell a lot about a person by what place *that* is. I don't know what my Mountain Longing says about me, but I know it's not something I can just shake off. I think the mountains and my soul are inextricably linked, and I think I'll forever be thinking of them.

That tall muscular boy is my little brother. Yesterday, he decided to go to flight school and become a pilot. He starts classes in September. 
I remember being kids together. There was a box of VHS tapes in the upstairs closet, and I'd always want to watch Wee Sing or Kidsongs (because, musicals) and he'd pick There Goes An Airplane or that one about dump trucks. The shelves in his room were filled with metal model planes, and sometimes we'd fight and he'd hit me with one and then get spanked.

He was a spindly little guy who watched TV perched atop the staircase knoll, and he'd climb into trees to play his Gameboy. I think, for Jake, the world has always looked brighter from Up High.

When we moved to The Ranch, Mom and Dad gave him his very own room in the barn. "Keep it as clean or messy as you want; it's your space; we'll never touch the stuff in here." He'd spend hours out there painting model airplanes with these tiny bottles of model paint. The room was always an absolute disaster, but the planes were perfectly painted.

Dad used to take us to the elementary school field to launch rockets, and when we moved to Texas Jake bought a foam plane from Walmart and spent months turning it into an RC plane, with a real motor and propeller and everything. It hit speeds of 80MPH when it flew.

Someday, he'll be flying helicopters through the mountains. And really, the journey to That Moment began when he was two.

Most times, the threads of our lives weave together to create a tapestry that Makes Perfect Sense.

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