Pilot Boy

We have known Nick for over four years now.  We have watched him graduate from high school and college.  He has spent countless hours at our house hanging out with our family.  We know that he likes ridges on his pasta noodles and loves to play board games.  He's traveled several places with us including both Bloomington and Florida.  Recently, he spent all of Christmas break with us as his family had Covid.  Needless to say, he's definitely become a part of the Heinisch family.

One important part of Nick's life that we spent a lot of time talking with him about this fall was job hunting.  Although, we had helped Brett, Cal and Meg with their career search, we knew absolutely nothing about how to get a job as a pilot.  Thankfully, Nick figured that out pretty quickly as he had a network of pilots to talk to at Purdue.  Instead of helping with the search, we focused on just being supportive of his efforts instead.  I would listen to his or Meg's ideas on where and what he wanted to do.  Doug helped him with his resume and ultimately read the contract before he signed for his current position.

In all of the time that we have spent with Nick, I never really thought about the fact that he would be a pilot one day.  Even when he was texting us from the Indianapolis airport while we were circling the runway, letting us know why we were delayed in landing, it just didn't dawn on me that one day he would be in the air, getting ready for take off and assessing the plane for any maintenance issues.  

That changed this week.  As I was listening to Meg talk about all of the places that Nick would be visiting over the next ten days, I noticed a picture on my camera roll.  It was him in his pilot uniform, all smiles in the mirror.  That was when I finally realized, "Wow, Nick really is a pilot."  At that moment, I was so incredibly proud of how hard he worked to make his dream come true.  The next day a new picture on my camera roll showed up.  It was still Nick in uniform, but this time making a goofy face that I was more used to seeing.  I texted Meg immediately and said, "Now, that's the Nick I know."