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On my very first flight as a pilot, a passenger began choking in first class. When I rushed to his aid, I saw the same birthmark that had haunted me throughout my childhood. The man I had spent 20 years searching for was suddenly lying at my feet, and he wasn’t who I thought he was.
For as long as I can remember, I have always been obsessed with the sky.
It all started with an old photograph that was shown to me at the orphanage where I grew up.
Every time life tried to make me deviate from my path, I returned to it.
In this photo, I was about five years old. I was sitting in the cockpit of a small plane, smiling, as if the entire horizon belonged to me.
Behind me stood a man. For twenty years, I believed that this man was my father.
This photograph was the most important thing in my entire life. It was a link to my past.
Every time life tried to make me deviate from my path, I returned to it.
Someone had placed me in this cockpit for a specific reason.
When the instructors claimed that I had neither the background nor the financial means to become a pilot, I believed this photo more than their words.
Well, today that dream came true.
This image carried me through the theoretical courses, the endless hours in the simulator, and every setback encountered along the way.
I was convinced that if I could sit in that seat again, then everything in my life would finally make sense.
Well, today that dream came true.
At twenty-seven, I am finally sitting in the captain’s seat of an airliner.
It was my very first flight as a pilot.
I watched the runway stretch towards the sun.
The takeoff was perfect.
I remembered the nights spent poring over pilots’ logs.
We reached our cruising altitude and, gazing at the bright blue sky, I thought back on all the ways I had tried to find my father over the years.
I remembered the nights spent browsing pilots’ records, sending unanswered emails, freezing old photos to study this birthmark on faces encountered in airports.
I had convinced myself that if I flew enough, if I worked in the right places, our paths would inevitably cross.
But up there, stable and in control of the situation, this quest suddenly seemed pointless to me.
I had already arrived where I had spent my whole life wanting to be.
I exhaled slowly. Could I really abandon this research after so long? It had become as essential to my existence as my career.
“What was that?”
A few hours after the start of the flight, a noise was heard in first class, just behind us.
“What was that?”