Our son Mike’s Make-A-Wish flight to Disneyland became something else midair. The captain told passengers to check their seat pockets. Inside: crayon boarding passes—crooked airplanes with no destination. Months earlier, Mike had drawn one for a mute boy named Nolan in the hospital. “Pretend we’re on vacation,” he’d said. That pass birthed a hospital tradition, then spread to Wish flights worldwide. That day, every passenger held one. Strangers wept. Mike waved; the whole plane waved back. He died that winter. Days later, a scrapbook arrived—notes from every passenger, and Nolan’s original pass, saved. On it, someone had written: Hope sometimes arrives before the plane does.
