He always chose the aisle.
Not because he was afraid of flying or needed the extra room.
He chose it because the aisle made leaving easier.
After years of traveling for work, he had developed a system.
Laptop out before takeoff.
Earbuds in.
Inbox open the moment the Wi-Fi connected.
By the time the wheels touched down, he could have half a day’s work behind him.
Airports no longer felt like places.
They were transitions.
Houston.
Atlanta.
Chicago.
Denver.
Gate numbers.
Boarding groups.
Rental cars.
Hotel rooms.
He knew which airports had decent coffee, which security lines moved fastest and exactly how late he could arrive at the gate without hearing his name over the speaker.
He was good at traveling.
Mostly because he had learned how to make it disappear.
So, when he booked the early flight home that Thursday morning, he chose the aisle.
At least, he thought he had.
The gate agent looked at his boarding pass, then at her screen.
“Looks like we had an equipment change. I had to move you.”
He glanced down.
28A.
Window.
“Nothing on the aisle?”
She tapped the keyboard.
“Full flight.”
He almost asked again.
Instead, he took the boarding pass and headed toward the plane.
It was only two hours.
He would survive.
He settled into 28A, placed his bag beneath the seat and opened his laptop.
The man beside him was already asleep.
Outside, it was still dark.
The plane pushed away from the gate, taxied onto the runway and lifted into the morning sky.
A few minutes later, the captain announced that Wi-Fi would be available once they reached cruising altitude.
Fine.
He could work offline.
He opened the presentation he had been working on and stared at the screen.
He changed two words.
Read the sentence again.
Changed one of them back.
Then, almost without thinking, he looked out the window.
A thin orange line had appeared along the horizon.
He looked back at his laptop.
Then outside again.
The city had disappeared beneath a layer of clouds.
Above them, the sky was beginning to change.
Black softened into blue.
Blue gave way to violet.
Then orange.
Then gold.
The sun had not appeared yet.
But everything seemed to know it was coming.
He lowered the laptop screen.
Just for a minute.
The first edge of the sun broke across the horizon, spilling light over the tops of the clouds.
He watched.
He didn’t take a picture.
Didn’t record a video.
Didn’t reach for his phone to post it somewhere.
He simply watched.
And somewhere in the middle of it, he remembered another sunrise.
He couldn’t have been more than twelve.
His father had awakened him before dawn to go fishing and they had sat beside a lake with two rods propped against an old tackle box.
He remembered the mist hovering over the water.
His father’s thermos.
The smell of damp grass.
The sun slowly appearing through the trees on the opposite bank.
He had said something about how beautiful it was.
His father had looked across the water and nodded.
“Yeah. It does that every morning.”
He smiled.
He hadn’t thought about that morning in years.
Maybe decades.
Yet there it was.
His father.
The lake.
The mist.
The sunrise.
All of it waiting somewhere inside him.
He looked again at the light spilling across the clouds and wondered when he had stopped noticing things like this.
He couldn’t remember.
There hadn’t been a day when he decided beauty was no longer important.
Life had simply become full.
Career.
Mortgage.
Flights.
Deadlines.
Children.
College.
Meetings.
More flights.
None of it was bad.
Most of it was good.
Some of it had been very good.
But somewhere along the way, he had become remarkably efficient at getting from one thing to the next—and then from the next thing to whatever came after that.
He had learned to move through airports without seeing them.
Eat meals without tasting them.
Answer “How are you?” without considering the question.
He had watched his children grow through photographs he kept promising himself he would organize someday.
He had become very good at moving.
He just wasn’t sure anymore what he was moving toward.
A notification appeared on his laptop.
Wi-Fi connected.
Emails began arriving.
Seven.
Then nine.
Then twelve.
He looked at the screen.
Then at the sunrise.
For once, nothing felt urgent enough to make him turn away.
So, he closed the laptop.
Completely this time.
The man beside him kept sleeping.
A flight attendant rolled a cart somewhere behind them.
Someone coughed.
A baby cried a few rows ahead.
Nothing dramatic happened.
He didn’t decide to quit his job.
He didn’t suddenly understand the meaning of life.
He didn’t promise himself that everything would be different from now on.
He simply sat beside a window at thirty thousand feet and watched morning arrive.
And he remembered something.
He used to notice beautiful things.
Maybe he still did.
Maybe that part of him hadn’t disappeared at all.
Maybe it had simply become difficult to hear beneath everything demanding his attention.
The plane continued east, and the sun climbed higher.
Eventually, he opened his laptop again.
The emails were still there.
Of course they were.
He answered them.
Finished the presentation.
Landed.
Collected his bag.
Went home.
Life continued.
Monday morning, he booked another flight.
Same airline.
Same route.
Same early departure.
When the seat map appeared, there were plenty of aisles available.
He looked at them for a moment.
Then he chose the window.
Remember.
About REMEMBER
REMEMBER is an ongoing collection of modern parables exploring identity, memory, grace and the quiet journey back to ourselves.
Each story stands on its own while gradually becoming part of a larger collection that will one day be published as a single volume.
Until then, welcome to The REMEMBER Library.
With respect,
Wayne (Adam) Greer
Part of Remember — stories about uncovering what was never really lost.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
About the Author
Wayne Adam Greer writes stories for people who have spent too much of life trying to become enough.
Through fiction, reflections, and practical frameworks, he explores identity, grace and the quiet process of uncovering what was never really lost.
His work is an invitation to slow down, look again and remember.
🌐 WayneAdamGreer.com
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