A stranger cut in front of my 81-year-old father at airport security and called him a “confused old fellow.” Dad quietly told me to let it go.

came home after dark, smelling of grease and cold metal.

“Where do you go?” I asked him once, when I was eleven.

“The hangar,” he said.

“Why?”

“Somebody’s got to keep the engines running.”

That was all the explanation I ever got.

I grew up thinking my father simply loved his work more than he loved vacations.

I was wrong, and it would take an airport, a stranger, and a pair of silver wings to show me how wrong.

We had flown to Spokane to spend a week with my sister, Trisha, and it had been the loveliest week we’d had in years.

On the last morning, he stood by the car with his cap on and his canvas jacket zipped to the chin, patting his pockets one at a time.

At Spokane International, the terminal smelled of burnt coffee and floor wax.

The security line was long, and it