A pilot's wink

  • Published
  • By Elizabeth May
DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  I live near an Air Force Base. Usually this fact has absolutely no impact on my life whatsoever. It simply means that sometimes we have to pause in our conversations as jets go roaring overhead in twos or fours, screaming their way back to the base. 
Sometimes it means that we see F-22's taking off before us at the airport right alongside all the commercial and commuter planes. Mostly, though, it does not affect me. I don't even live close enough to the base to see cute Airmen in the grocery store or anything. I do have one little connection with the flyers of Davis Monthan though, that I think is so special.

Every morning, one of them winks at me.

This requires a little explaining probably. You see, on my street, all of the houses face exactly north or south. That means that everyone's side windows face exactly east or west. In my house, my bedroom and bathroom have east facing windows. When the sun rises, it fills this side of the house with bright bright sunlight, while the other rooms still look like night. It is no fun in the summer when the sun rises straight in your face at 5:30 in the morning, but in the winter, it's so much nicer. You start to get a pinky glow at 6:30 and by seven, the window is all sparkly. I especially like the sparkly window effect in the bathroom, where the window is textured and frosty. The sunrise through that window turns the whole pane into one big diamond. It gets even better when the shower has been going because then the air is all sparkly too with the tiny water droplets. So, when I'm good and can manage to get in the shower around 7 or 7:30, I spend most of the time staring at the gorgeous window. This is what I was doing when I first saw the wink.

I was looking at the window with perfect indifference to the time or the soap dripping down my face when for a split second the sparkles stopped and the room turned dark. It happened in less than a blink, so I thought that maybe I imagined it. Afterall, I am not a morning person, and I probably had been staring too long. But it happened again the next day. And again. It happens almost every day.

By some magic trick of timing and light, at the same moment I am staring at the diamond window, a plane flies overhead on its way to the base and blocks out my light. The shadow from a fighter plane must be very small and must move very fast, but it crosses exactly over my house early every morning when I am looking at the sunrise. When I first realized that it must be a plane blocking my window, I started thinking about the person flying that plane.

He probably got up much earlier than I did because he is already on his way home. Home safe at the base. He is seeing the same rising sun that I am, but probably saw it much earlier from that height. He's thinking of breakfast, or a nap, or worrying about the landing, or thinking about a deployment. 3,000 feet above me, my airman has no idea that I see him. That I think about him every morning. That I pray for him to make it safely back to Davis Monthan.

I sometimes wonder if he feels eyes on him as he comes in to land. If he knows that I care. I have never actually met anyone who lives or works at the base, but my pilot has brought the war to me in a way that no news broadcast or political speech ever could. When I hear of war casualties I immediately think of my pilot, high above Tucson, alone in the cockpit, thinking that no one notices. I notice. I care. And I'm winking right back.