Requiem to Fly

What numbers?

Everyone always told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up, just as long as I worked hard enough to reach my goals. But, I wish that they had told me then that my dreams of being able to fly, well pilot a plane would be impossible, and that I should move on to pursuing a different goal in life.

It kind of ran in the family to, growing up and going into an "extreme" career after college. My mom and dad both met and fell in love while training to be trapeze artists. From what I remember from their stories is that my mom had been working on a tumbling routine at the gymnasium, when suddenly a flip that she had been doing for years, went totally wrong and she had not landed properly, she broke her leg, dislocated a shoulder, and broke a few of her fingers. My dad had been one of the only people in the building that came to help her, he refused to leave her side even when the ambulance came to take her away, and well that was the start of their love story.

My older brother Ty, went into the army, he's been on multiple deployments, and he moved up the ranks pretty quickly, he was respected and loved by pretty much everyone. He was snipped one night while he was on patrol. I had always looked up to him, it was his love and compassion for other people that really made the biggest impact in my life though, seeing the smiles that my brother was able to put on strangers faces just by small acts of kindness always gave me warm and happy feelings.

Then there is my older sister Corrin, she isn't really allowed to talk about what she does, but she works for the government. I mean with that description alone that leads me to believe that she's some super secret agent, where if she tells us what she did, she would have to kill us. There isn't much contact between her and the rest of the family, I like to think that it's because she doesn't want the "enemies" to know who her family is, you know so that they couldn't capture us and use us for blackmail or something like that. Corrin and I were never really that close though, she is 10 years older than me, but it makes me sad to think about how my parents feel about her never calling, or coming home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And then there's me, Julia.From a young age I knew that I was different, I could never understand why though, that was until I was 8 almost 9, it was the first time I went to the ophthalmologist (the eye doctor), it was one of the first times that I was given this strange new test, the test was very strange, the doctor presented me with papers that had different sized circles all in the form of one large circle, he told me to tell him what number I saw, I told him that he was crazy, that there was not a number in the circle, I then proceed to shuffle through the other pages, I don't know why the doctor had asked me to find the number in the circle, there wasn't a number in any of the circles!

The doctor frowned, "What color is my shirt?"

I was very confused, why would he even ask that question, " It's kind of a greeny- yellow-y color."

"My shirt is red," the doctor began quickly scribbling notes down in the tiny yellow pad that he had. "And what about the walls, what color are they?"

It was strange, why did this crazy doctor wear a pretty exact colored shirt to the color of his wall, "it's almost the same color as your shirt."

The doctor looked down again and scribbled some more things down, "The walls are green." He took a long pause before continuing, "Julia, have you ever heard of something called color blindness?"

I was baffled, I had heard of color blindness, but I thought that only dogs, cats, and other animals could be color blind. I was too shocked to respond, so I just nodded my head.

The doctor continued talking, "Currently this is a very rare thing for girls to have, your father must also be color blind, or your mother just has a very rare gene. Luckily scientists are working on a device that works with the cones and rods within the eye to help work with color blindness. We can get you on a waiting list so that once this device is perfected you will be one of the first people to have access to it. I would just have to get permission from your mother, since you are under 18." The doctor left to go talk with my mom, I remained sitting in the patient chair, still soaking all this information in. From a young age I knew that I wanted to fly planes one day, I also knew that you couldn't be a pilot if you were colorblind. Just at that thought I wanted to cry. I felt like my dreams were quickly being destroyed right before my eyes.

The doctor came back into the room with my mom, I have always been vocal about what I wanted to do with my life, both my parents have been fully supportive of my dreams, I could see that my mom knew that me being color blind could lead to issues when it came to me being a pilot, "If you being able to use this device to see color so that you could once again possibly be a pilot means that you will be happy for the rest of your life,then even if it may mean that I'm spending money than I want to, it is all worth it because you will be happy, and able to pursue your dreams."

All I could do was cry.

Now flash forward 10 years, there I was, sitting with all my peers, at graduation, I had done it, I graduated number one in my class, I was graduating with my Pilot license, and an Aviation degree. It was my Sophomore year of high school where the device finally came out, that was the best day of my life. I am so happy that my parents were so supportive of me, without them I would have never had the chance to reach for my dreams.