Hired as a Flight Attendant after 65

No Limits in Our Imagination

Funny how much I change every five years or so. Lately it seems more often. For example, I was a horse crazy kid, which continued for fifty years. I even trained with an Olympic horse jumping coach. After my last horse passed, Jim and I downsized and moved onto our sailboat and I took up early morning kayaking. It became my “sea horse.” Instead of daily trips to the socially lively barn, I now silently paddled the channels in between pristine white yachts, interacting with sea lions.

It reminded me of the words of Walden: I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

Yet, my childhood dream of becoming a flight attendant never went away. That part of me stayed solid, secure, and always in the dreaming stage. Until one day my dream came true.

I was already restless at 13 as I lay on the grass in my hometown in Wisconsin watching a plane so high overhead it was a mere dot. I imagined a life where I looked down at the clouds instead of upward and I determined that as soon as I was old enough my life of travel and adventure would begin. I had a clear sense that I was missing something important and I convinced myself that getting on an airplane…