Who needs two engines anyway?

We were flying to Sioux Falls, South Dakota by way of Denver for a wedding. The plane smelled of feet and iron. The Captain came on and said something like "We have reached cruising altitude and it should be smooth sailing from here on out" when there was a loud BANG to my right.

You can't make this stuff up.

After a minute or two, the Captain came back on and told us the right engine had "substantial damage" and had to be shut down. He then explained that the plane handles just fine with only one engine and we would be heading back to Denver to switch planes.

For my part, I wasn't really that worried. I have been on some pretty dicey flights to and from Michigan in the dead of winter, so I figured they would tell us if we had to worry. The Captain seemed calm and upbeat and the crew kept serving drinks. Fine. Then I realized Jenna had a death-grip on my arm and tears running down her face. I leaned in close to her and tried to say reassuring things as she had her first full-on panic attack.

From this point on, every little wobble and hiccup meant we were all going to die in a huge ball of fire.

The woman behind Jenna started talking about how she was seventy years old and was ready to go if that's what needed to happen. The guy behind me was praying out loud. The couple to our right was holding hands and talking about pounding martinis if we made it out alive. The women in front of us were talking about every plane crash they could ever remember.

It is REALLY difficult to be reassuring when that is going on around you.

"Take control. It's not time to worry yet." And then her breathing slowed. She was repeating a mantra and the only thing I could make out was "I have so much left to do" and something about seeing Gypsy again. I don't think my own words made much of a difference, but they made me feel less impotent.

It was time to land. The plane started bucking all over. There was another BANG.

In this situation, your brain is not your friend. It flashes all kinds of nasty images in front of you and you concoct entire conversations that your friends will have about you and your untimely demise. Your screenplays go unproduced, your family name dies with you and your dog goes unfed. Thanks, brain.

When the wheels touched down I saw a huge fireball come hurtling down the middle of the cabin and wash over me. I watched the seats melt and the bodies vaporize as I stretched my hands out in front of me, a feeble gesture to hold it all back. Then I blinked and everyone was breathing easy, grateful to be down on the ground again.

I turned to find Jenna smiling at me, her face dry now. I kissed her on the head, and everything was okay.

The flight attendant, Melodie, said that none of the crew had ever been through anything like this. She said they train for it and everything went exactly the way it was supposed to. The Captain's name, for the record, was Brad Frost. If you ever meet him, buy him a beer for me. I would look for him myself but I'm going to be too busy producing movies, making babies and feeding my dog.

United Airlines has given each of us a "Sorry You Almost Died, Come Back Any Time" voucher. We might take them up on it as soon as we figure out Captain Frost's schedule. We have so much left to do.

Life and death at my door.

When I opened my door yesterday, I found three little baby birds. There was a nest up in the corner of the building and it had collapsed, spilling the precious little things into the stone courtyard below. There was a heart-stopping moment when I realized that I could have easily stomped one without ever seeing it. They were so small, and so perfectly camouflaged that we were sure somebody else would stomp them into oblivion if we didn't move them.

When Jenna, my girlfriend, went out to find them, there were only two birds. We looked all over the place for the missing bird but found nothing. We did, however, find a little pool of blood directly under the defunct nest. Hmmm. Jenna scooped our two new friends up with a newspaper and gave them a new home in the big orange planter in the middle of the courtyard. They could live there safely until Mommy Bird showed up again.

Jenna, it should be noted, is a bird person. She has an African Grey and he's the love of her life. Naturally, she fussed over the little birds and tried to make them as comfortable as possible, even building a little shelter out of rocks to keep them warm for the night. I watched from the upstairs window as Mommy Bird found them and fed them. Woo-hoo! We went to bed, hoping for the best.

When I left for work the next day, they were still alive and hopping. I was elated. Turns out my morning grumpiness is no match for cute little birds. Jenna regaled me with updates all day and I was proud to hear that one of them had hopped off into the big bad world, strong enough to leave.

They grow up so fast.

When I got home, I took one last look at the tiny pool of blood on the stone slab. For the first time, I noticed tracks leading toward the building. I followed it with my eyes and found the body of the third little bird. He had made it as far as the stoop and had laid his little head on it. He could have been sleeping, but he wasn't. Jenna buried him in the potting soil after dinner. By then, the last bird had hopped away.

When I took Gypsy out for her evening walk, I stared at the planter. I'd spent the last two days worrying about three tiny little bundles of feathers and now I missed them. I wondered what they were doing and if they were okay. I wondered if there was an orange planter big enough for all of us, should we need it.

A burning question.

My mother tells me that I never asked her "Why?" like so many kids do. I find this hard to believe because I know I questioned why I had to come in when the streetlights came on, why I had to eat those revolting beets and why I had to march in yet another Tulip Time parade. She sticks to her story and insists that my question, the one that drove her crazy, was "And then what happened?" I'll provide an example for you:

"Your father and I got married and went to the Pocono Mountains for our honeymoon."

"And then what happened?"

"It rained the whole time we were there."

"And then what happened?"

"Your sister happened."

You get the idea. Every time somebody recounted their day, I provided a minefield of questions about what happened next. I had an insatiable desire to find out the rest of the story. What I remember is that there was always more. Something always happened after whatever they were trying to tell me and it was almost always more interesting than whatever they originally wanted to share.

I have carried this fascination with me into adulthood. It serves me well in the world of screenwriting, but in my personal life it has become this giant, unspeakable thing in the center of my brain, dictating every action, every thought. Tomorrow is always more interesting than today. My accomplishments are nothing compared to what I'm going to do. The people in my life are never as impressive as the people I will meet tomorrow.

This is no way to live.

This never-ending quest I've been on to find the future and to dig into consequences has left me unable to fully appreciate the moment I'm living through. I never smile about today without worrying about tomorrow.

Some days I think the best thing that could happen is that I could be diagnosed with some terminal illness and be given six months to live. Poof! The future would be gone in a string of sentences uttered by some Beverly Hills doctor. Just like that I'd be free to let the world happen around me at its own pace. Fortunately, that's not my story.

My terminal disease is life. If I live to be eighty, I'll have almost fifty years to learn to forget about tomorrow and live for today, to stop being promising and start being good and to make a life on purpose instead of holding out for some vague nothing out there on the horizon.

As a child you can be anything, so I think I just wanted to know my options. As an adult I have already been many things, and now I find my list of available options getting shorter. Every day I cross off a few more and boil me down further to find whatever lies beneath my manicured layers of artifice and ego in a blind search for what I want my life to be. I know I'm getting close to it but I can't touch it yet, can't taste it on my tongue. I took a big step by writing this and putting it out there.

And then what happened?