In another timeline, I’m not a wife screaming about her husband’s obsession with planes, your obsession with flying away from us, and an egret isn’t caught in the propeller of your Cessna, isn’t fanned into bloody feathers stuccoing the plane’s windshield, and the engine hasn’t quit, and your final radio transmission isn’t you shouting you’re going to glide this one out, zero visibility, Brace, Brace, Brace…

In another timeline, a storm comes through, and you push your takeoff time back, or better yet, cancel the trip entirely, schedule the flight for another day, choosing to spend time with me, with your kids, instead of once again flying off into the clouds, and the egret finds a place to stay dry and dreams of delicious worms after rain passes.

In another timeline, we take the kids bicycling over steaming asphalt in a V formation like we are a flock of egrets, and you talk about how wrong it feels to not to be in the air, how you hate being grounded, and I remind you that you can let go of the handlebars, put your arms out to your side, let the bike coast and look up at the sky, and is this not flying?

In another timeline, we fill our bellies with barbecue and beers at the beach, sand in our hair, our teeth, our toes, grounded in all the best ways, and we discuss a vacation to Barcelona, fantasize about the kids’ future colleges and occupations, like egrets dreaming of delicious worms after rain passes.

But in this timeline, the kids and I ride bikes to the beach without you, and I let go of the handlebars, arms out to the side

I am left gliding

Zero visibility

Shouting Brace, Brace, Brace