Starflight

Okay, so on Monday I promised a post in regards to a tweet. It was also a facebook status. This might all make bit more sense if I had my complete story up.

I’m a slacker so I do not. Yet. I will.

Okay. Here was the tweet.

I’m not really sure what happened.

It’s been 12 years.

I live with what happened every day. I talk about it every day in some form or another. I think about it every day. It is my every day.

I NEVER ESCAPE IT.

So, why did seeing starflight UP CLOSE have that effect on me?

I mean, I saw starflight last month, when my state was burning.  They were dropping water on a fire less than a mile from my house.

I can’t really explain what I felt. It happened so suddenly. We saw the helicopters in the parking lot. The boys were jumping out of their skin with excitement. We made our way to them. I was less than 10 feet away. I was standing off to the side to take pictures. Kids were climbing in. They were giggling. My kids were about 3 families back. They were now 2 families back. My heart started pounding. My breathing got heavy. My hands were shaking. I almost started crying. I had to take several deep breaths and smile. MY kids were up. I had to get close enough to touch it. I took the pictures but everything was foggy.

It was time to roll to the other side. MY boys were smiling.

Then they wanted to go to the back and see where the patient goes in. I wanted so badly to scream.

I managed to whisper to Charlie what I was feeling but there was nothing he could do. He was juggling Nathan and the boys were running off to look at the police helicopter. The exact same helicopter. Just a different paint job and different layout on the inside. I immediately calmed down. The feeling passed. It lasted no more than 5 minutes. Max.

Later, when it took off, I felt nothing. It was loud and I briefly thought about how loud it was from the ground and compared it to how loud it was actually being IN one but the racing pulse, heavy breathing, all that was gone. It didn’t return.