the world passes overhead

Every so often at the Al Wooten Center I have a conversation with a kid that reminds how different their young world is from the one I grew up in.

The girls met my sister when she came to visit me a few months ago, and haven't stopped asking about her since: "Where's Bethany," Natalie asks, "is she ever coming back?" "She'd like to," I said, "but she's all the way over in Chicago. And you know what? This summer she's actually going to India!" Natalie's mouth opens and her eyes get big--clearly this bit of information is interesting to her. "You mean she gunna get on a airplane?! Oh my God, I would die!!" and she turns with Elia to join the rest of the girls in their game of wall ball.

I laugh softly to myself--without meaning to be, the kids are often hilarious and completely endearing as they verbalize whatever comes to their mind. I don't think anything more about that short conversation until after most of our kids had trickled out of the center and I was left alone on the playground, shooting three attempts in the pleasantly muggy late afternoon. As I stand there enjoying the relative quiet, I suddenly become aware of another sound, one that's always there and therefore just part of the normal, unnoticed background noise in South Central. Initially it sounds far-off, but then gets closer, until it's right overhead--the vaguely eerie rumble of jet airplanes passing overhead as they fly in and out of nearby LAX.

I look up at the plane, and think of Natalie. I'm suddenly aware for the first time of how the sky is actually crisscrossed with planes. I think of the enormous bustle of people, cargo, and ideas that move in and out of LAX every hour, brought in by those planes from across the United States and the world. If you look hard enough you can almost see the invisible arteries that connect LA to the rest of America and the global economy.

But if you're Natalie what you see is this massive aluminum rocket that you would be terrified to sit in. You see this because for you the act of getting on a plane and going somewhere is likely as foreign as the world beyond South Central, and we humans are naturally hesitant when encountering the unknown.

The big wide world flows like a river in the sky over the heads of the kids. I wonder how many of them will learn to reach up and touch it.