When I was a kid I sometimes used to lie on the grass in our back garden looking up at the sky, picking out objects and finding faces in the clouds as they moved in slow motion far above me.

Often among the hazy wisps and cotton wool constellations there white lines drawn by distant jets that shimmered in the summer sun. I'd lie there and watch them as they cut through the clouds, disappearing and reappearing, traveling at speeds that seemed only a little faster than those I could achieve on my bike.

As the jets flew into the distance, melting into the summer blue sky, I'd give them a little wave, the kind you might give a small child looking back at you from the rear seat of a car as it drives away.

My Dad was often working in the garden, tending his beloved flower beds or doing something similarly green-fingered. From time to time I remember asking him where a plane was going. His answer was always the same and often given without so much as an upward glance. "France." He'd say. And with the kind of trust only children posses I'd simply lie there and wonder what it must be like to go to France, or indeed anywhere, in the kind of plane that threads an evaporating trail across the sky.

Of course they weren't all flying to France; it was simply my Dad's answer to most of our childhood geographical questions. We'd be at Southend beach in Essex, and he would point toward Kent just across the mouth of the River Thames saying, "Look, you can see France." But that was back in the days when trips to Danbury Common and Hylands Park seemed like adventures that were far from home, when in reality they were no more than a fifteen minute drive away from our house in Chelmsford.

Now at thirty two years old I think I'm the only 'grown up' who still waves at planes. Their distant vapor trails look so peaceful, and still they seem to move slower than anything around me.

I don't know what it is about them that fascinates me so. But even now, all these years later, I still stand there and watch them draw a line under the heavens before giving them a little wave to send them on their way, to wherever that might be.

I think I like the fact that a tale is unfolding before my eyes. No matter how routine the journey, there is always the possibility of new experiences and adventures. Perhaps even the kind of events that become sewed into the very fabric of that which makes us the people we are, creating the kind of milestones by which we measure our before's and after's.

I often go to beaches not far from where I live to watch the setting sun spectacularly dip into the cold yet somehow inviting sea. No two sunsets are ever the same. The sky fills with saturated shades of reds and oranges fading into deep dark blues.

It's then when the distant planes look their most alluring as they make their way toward the horizon. Beneath them the golden waves of the Irish Sea, then after quickly passing over Ireland, just mile upon mile of nothing but Atlantic Ocean. To me this is what hope looks like: a clear sky, an empty ocean and a plane chasing the sun, leaving only a vapor trail fading in its wake.

I know they can't see me as I wave. They don't need to see me.
I'm not waving for them... I'm waving for me.