I'd like to talk about my mother for a second.
If you asked her as a little girl, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" She would proudly respond, "airline pilot".
Well my mother never became an airline pilot. Instead, she worked at an airport during college as a gate agent. She would stare longingly at the planes taking off as if it was an impossible dream.
My mom went to college and graduated with her degree in international business. Not even a year later, she was married. And that was the narrative of her life.
5 years later she had me and she was working as a sales rep for a pharma company.
While she loved her life, something seemed to be missing.
My mother raised me to be fiercely independent. She always instilled in me the idea hat as women, we could achieve anything we wanted.
I think after years of saying this she realized how she never really took her own advice.
Looking up she saw a plane zoom above her, gliding effortlessly through the clouds.
Perhaps it was a sign?
Either way, she signed up for flying lessons.
She told no one.
And then one day, I remember this perfectly, she sat my brother and I down and said "ok guys, today we are doing something big"
I was 12 years old, I remember wearing a green polo shirt, and utter confusion crossed my face.
She drove us to a small airport in Miami. We still had no idea what we were doing here.
We were met by a nice guy wearing a pilots uniform standing next to a small prop plane on the otherwise empty tarmac.
I looked at my mom, then to the man, then to my mom again.
"No. we. are. not." I spit out.
"Oh yes we are" my mother reassured me, them most excited I have ever seen her.
My mother was taking us flying.
I nervously entered the plane, put on a pair of headphones and said a silent prayer.
My mother was so confident. She was absolutely fearless. I could not believe what i was seeing as she pushed all the buttons and said some commands into her own headphones. And all of a sudden we were moving, gradually and then all at once. I shut my eyes so tight I got a headache.
When I opened them all I could see was the blue color of the perfect sky around us.
We were flying. My mom was finally a pilot.
She flew us around for an hour and then effortlessly touched us back down.
"You can do anything you want Andrea, remember that."
That day she wasn't just my mom, she was my superhero.
