Flying Home for Christmas

Martha Lunken

Thursday, December 09, 2010 at 09:02 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The article begins with the author's deep connection to pilot and poet Gill Robb Wilson, whose sentiment about flying home for Christmas profoundly influenced her.
The author recounts her own "best ever" Christmas Eve flight, where she unexpectedly rode in the cockpit jumpseat of an American Airlines DC-6, creating a magical memory of flying home.
The piece concludes with "The Midnight Clear," a poignant story about a compassionate pilot who describes a non-existent, submerged hometown to a blind passenger on Christmas Eve, allowing him to experience the joy of seeing his beloved home.

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I’m essentially a little airplane pilot, and only rarely have I “flown far out across the prairies of the sky to lands my fathers never knew and shores my kindred never trod,” but I think any pilot understands Gill Robb Wilson’s feelings about flying home for Christmas:

I’ve blessed my wings a thousand times
For where they’ve carried me …
But there is a nearer ecstasy!
The wings that bear one home …
The joy of letting down to the place
The heart has never left — the thrill
of returning to the one spot on earth
beloved above all others — home!
And, if it be “Home for Christmas,”
How thrice blessed are my wings.
— Gill Robb Wilson