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Grounded: A Haibun

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Written for dVerse Poets Haibun Monday:
Journeying. Our host, Frank, challenges
us to create a haibun based on journeying.

Image by Me & ChatGPT

In 1965, my parents, sister, and I spent the summer in Italy and Sicily. I loved every minute of living and traveling abroad and became obsessed with the idea of being a stewardess, as they were called back then. Throughout high school, the dream stayed with me and upon my graduation, I was accepted to a New York City based modeling, flight attendant and secretarial academy called Grace Downs Air Career School. I was on my way to making my dream a reality …. but the wheels never left the ground. I was nineteen years old and newly engaged to be married.

I remember the crisp uniform which hung in my closet, the one I never got to wear. The airports of my imagination …. Paris, Tokyo, Cairo …. glittering just out of reach. In those days a ring on the finger meant grounded wings; the airline’s rulebook left no room for a soon-to-be-bride among the stewardesses. So I folded that dream small enough to carry in a back pocket of memories, and turned instead toward a different runway.

What I found there was not a temporary career but a life I could never have scheduled: a husband whose hand fit mine through fifty plus years of ordinary miracles, exciting times filled with music and laughter, friends who became family, children who became fine young adults, grandchildren who are the loves of my life.

I never traveled the world as I’d dreamed; instead, I built a whole world of dreams right where I stood.

Looking back now, grounded, older, wiser, and happier, I see it clearly: the flight was not cancelled; the detour was the destination all along.

old flight plans folded
a garden grew instead
where the runway was

NAR©2026

This is “I Can See Clearly Now” by Jimmy Cliff

Haibun Monday 8-3-26: Journeying

Everything on the elephant trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

30 thoughts on “Grounded: A Haibun”

  2. I’m so glad you didn’t trade that runway for your “50 plus years” of marriage, motherhood, family, and love. You are certainly building a rich legacy, Nancy! I bet your husband and children rise up and call you blessed ❤️

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  7. This is wonderful, Nancy. It is also why I always cringed when we would be asked for our 5-year plan at work. Five years?! I don’t know what’s going on the next day and they wanted five years?!! Ridiculous.

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  9. That 1965 summer in Italy and Sicily lighting the spark, and then a whole garden growing where the runway was meant to be — this gave me chills. As a family always chasing the next departure gate, I love the reminder that the detour can be the destination. Paris, Tokyo and Cairo may have glittered just out of reach, but fifty-plus years of ‘ordinary miracles’ sounds like the richer itinerary. A beautiful piece.

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