SHE-FIRE

DAY 1 It's a hot Sunday morning in August, here at last with the strength of all my childhood Christmases. Today I am going to Africa! Paul lifts my suitcases into the trunk of our car, parked in front of Fernwood, our summer home at Chautauqua, New York, while I am saying goodbye to our neighbors. "Time to go," he calls. We drive around the corner, passing other large Victorian houses decked with flowers, the Reformed House on the right and Smith Library on the left, with the Amphitheatre across the park, just opposite the large Methodist House with its long porch and hanging baskets of red impatiens trailing vines. It feels good to be rolling, even at the posted speed limit of 12 m.p.h. "When I get back, you must tell me about all I missed." "Yes, I will. Looks like a good week. Literature theme in the morning lectures. Concerts look great, especially the Shostakovich. And then that young pianist that brought the house down last year. Remember him? We met him afterwards on the porch. He'll play on Saturday night." As we show our gate passes at the little ticket house and turn onto Rt. 394, I say a silent goodbye to the summer life I am used to, suck in my breath about the strangeness of where I'm going, then heave a sigh of relief to have all the preparations finished: papers filled out, books on Africa read, passport in hand, moneys sent in, medicines ready in case of a cold or diarrhea, shots stored away in my body to protect me from tetanus, malaria, yellow fever; clothes, cosmetics, a couple of reference books carefully chosen—everything at last packed, just yesterday. We had a good list to work from, so nothing important could be forgotten. "When we get out there in the bush," our leader had warned us, "there'll be no drug stores, no grocery stores—nothing! So double-check that list." Two hours later, we turn at the sign to Buffalo Niagara International Airport, and soon join the bustle and business of check-in, moving among the hundreds of travelers now on the escalators, now standing in line, now locating the gate. At last, Paul and I have a little time to relax and talk. We buy sandwiches and coffee. "I wish Michael and Melissa could have come along to see me off. And Mark. I miss him so much." This is the first summer since we bought the house, twelve years ago, that only two of our grandchildren have been with us for the whole summer. Mark is eighteen now, and has a job. "Well, it is better this way. They wouldn't know what to do on stage on Old First Night if they missed today's rehearsal." Melissa is ten and her cousin Michael is almost fourteen, both involved with Boys' and Girls' Club. "They'll be o.k. 'til you get back this afternoon. Lunch is in the fridge, and Julie's mom's on standby, in case she's needed. Remember, next Sunday is Michael's birthday. His present's wrapped and ready, on the floor of my closet." I find a telephone and talk to our daughter, Lisa, in Houston, to say goodbye again and tell her about Melissa's passing her rowing test. Our son, Mark, in Lancaster, was not at home. "Please tell him I tried to call," I say to Paul. And then it is time for the two of us to say the goodbye that will separate us for longer than we have ever been apart. (He travels a lot for meetings and to give lectures, but briefly.) We share a long tight hug that ends in a kiss. I wish he were going, too; but he never had the slightest interest in a safari. "It would just be a waste of time and money. You know me. I don't even like picnics." We're very different. But so it goes—and has gone well, overall, ever since we were young. Just as I start to pick up my carry-on, comes the surprise of another kiss—a quickie, a P.S.—as all forty-two years of our marriage hold me —and—let me—-go— ——— I board USAir in early afternoon. Half an hour later, the stewardess has checked the seat belts, and the engines are whirring, as we go in slow-rolling might along the ground (are you ready for this change it is no mistake but a type of fun) as we begin tospeedfastfasterovertherunwayinaforwardthrustofpowerthatincreasesandincreasesuntilwecome roar-ing into that gentlest of moments when the locus of trust changes we are airborne as when prose lifts into poetry and the great body ascends in the incredible lightness of being up over the stretch of flat land we are lifting up strong on mathematics on wind humanity's reason and imagination of all past years at work within physics climbing higher in aerodynamic fact we are going farther up with knowledge and the art of language rising yet higher we are a company of travelers supported all around and within by natural law ascending on the strength of observation and experiment we are f l y i n g riding in this modern miracle of aluminum and style and if we can do this on the outside I tell myself we can do it on the inside wait and see the human spirit will level out like this in a sky that has always sponsored f l y i n g — Would we be doing this in metal if Nature had not done it first in feathered flesh, millions of years before humanity made its gradual entrance onto the stage? Wings extend from this sleek body, complete with beak and tail, turning, tilting over the squares and cylinders of the city. The wheels are tucked away as birds stow their feet for efficiency in flight, while forward in the cockpit, pilots look out of windows as birds look out of eyes. High over birds, we are doing what we could never have done without them, we are being them, outdoing them, we are great wild geese in the change of season beginning to form alive the age-old V all bird all plane all human all hope all dream all plan all poem all myth inside outside seamlessly high we are flying away from Buffalo! Looking out my window, I stare down through currents of air and see toy cars and a scatter of dots beside little houses. Maybe those dots are people, the kind who are never too jaded or too old to look up and wonder under the ragged V flapping in the sky or a plane turning silver in sunfire trailing its long white memoir soon gone— Funny how growing up shrinks us smaller and smaller until looking out the window of a plane, I am a child again, lying on my back in the back yard, looking up, wondering. What is the sky? When two parties get acquainted, one must take the lead. Maybe the sky has done that simply by being there; or is it my mind on a high that takes the lead, yearning toward relationship by seeing the sky as a great old word, no matter in what language? I start the conversation by wondering, What do we have in common, the sky and I? What is it about me that is like you, intangible, yet there, here, real?