I had let myself become that, if I am honest.
Grief and a missing leg will do it.
You get small so the world has less of you to pity.
And in one hour, at thirty-five thousand feet, a man I had saved eleven years earlier reached down through his father and pulled me back up to my full height, in front of a hundred people and, more importantly, in front of my daughter.
Lily leaned over to me somewhere over Tennessee and whispered a question I will never forget.
“Daddy, were you always a hero, or did it just happen on the plane?”
And I told her the truth, which was the most important thing I have ever said to her.
“I was always the same, baby,” I said. “The plane didn’t change me. It just changed what people could see. You’ve been sitting next to the whole thing your entire life.”
