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I love flying—the feeling of being completely weightless thousands of feet in the air.  I love staring out the window at the cotton candy clouds, brought back to my childhood days, imagining angels diving between the soft beddings of clouds.  Beyond the clouds I can make out the deep blue haze of the ground below us—the occasional lines of streets and buildings standing out in a pale white, mountains accentuated by a darker blue.  Everything’s blurred; it’s impossible to tell what we’re actually over—what city or body of water.  It’s all just land and sea.  The sky spans on from blue into the stark white of the horizon.

Defined cumulus reminds me of waves breaking on the ocean—the thick, ever-changing sea foam rolling up to the shore, only to retreat back into the blue and be regurgitated onto shore.  Nothing’s permanent on the beach, just like vacation.  A week away from responsibilities and anything comparable to being an adult, and then you’re back to working a part-time job to save up money for November when student loans will plague your bank account.

Even if it means going home—back to Retail Hell—I love flying.  Even the flight itself isn’t too bad with throwback music pulsing through my earbuds from the complimentary XM Radio, iCarly on the laptop next to me, and the occasional kick of the little boy behind me growing restless; it’s not too bad.  My mom peers out her window in front of me at the clouds, sky, and plane wing.  I wonder what she thinks about looking out there.  Is she really seeing what’s outside or reminiscing on our week at the beach; drinking margaritas, reading paperback novels in the sun, letting out a hoot of exhilaration as we speed along on a wooden rollercoaster, or eating ice cream out of a waffle cone at Tyler’s.

There’s something bittersweet about flying home after vacation, and yet the feeling of normalcy returning to my life—the reconnection with the mundane—is something  I’ve come to crave after a long week of the unexpected.