Sylvia's Journal

All during our Atlantic crossing last night the moon shone big and bright through the plane’s window. We were so incredibly high in the sky that I could see the curvature of the earth. And deep down a fluffy layer of clouds, like a woolly safety blanket. It was beautiful and majestic. I said a prayer of thanks to the engineers who make this experience possible – it is both spiritual and mechanical. I was thinking of all the wires, cables, rivets and what not, that operate together as one flawless system, keeping this plane afloat and moving to its destination while we feel as if we are in a living room, tea served when we want it. It is quite remarkable. Aside from the engineers and ground crew I am also deeply appreciative of the skills of the people that fly us from here to there. Nothing is to be taken for granted. I can only imagine what it takes to fly a plane like this. I got a little inkling from my flight instructor Greg who is now, at the ripe young age of 22, flying a regional jet with real passengers out of St. Louis. He wrote me about the grueling hours of training it took before he was allowed to fly a Bombardier jet. Good for him, good for us!

Dawn is visible on the eastern horizon. This always reminds me of a hymn I had to learn in grade school (Nu daagt het in het Oosten) and I still hear the third grade teacher, juffrouw van Dalen, singing it. I have forgotten most of the words but not the melody. It was a comforting song, I remember, offering vistas of a desert landscape with me walking towards the sun holding Jesus’ hands. I knew Jesus from the pictures we were given at school, the ones my dad, a fervent anti-papist, did not like because they were too papist in his eyes. But I liked that Jesus; on many pictures he was surrounded by little kids in all colors, brown, black, yellow, red, and animals that usually don’t go together such as lambs and lions. Some of those animals I recognized from our petting zoo or the big zoo in Amsterdam where we went on our school trip in third grade. I still have the ancient super 8 movie my mom took of the bus leaving for the zoo, with someone from our family waving from the back row.

We came in for landing at Schiphol, taking an unusual route, somewhere near Rotterdam and then turning north, flying very low over the dunes. It was magnificent. The greenhouses were shining like small orange patches in the grey morning light and everything looking very wet. In back of us, towards the West, a long line of bright lights, planes stacked one above or after another, all coming in from America, I suppose, also inbound to land.

And now, onwards to Kilimanjaro.