Flying Lessons - NEXT - Peggy Webb

Ever wanted to run away from home? Ditch the responisbilities and expectations and live in your own skin, instead of having your identity tethered to those you love? At 53, Beth Martin realizes she is not living the life she wants to. Her youngest daughter is spreading her wings and flying west to Arizona, her eldest is following Beth's example and keeping close to her own nest.

Amid the malaise Beth looks for something more, something that's been lost for a while, but suddenly she's missing it like crazy. She tries a vacation by herself, and manages to finish the symphony she's been putting off for two decades, and hopes things will be better when her husband arrives and asks her to come home. But back on familiar ground nothing has changed, and Beth leaves for good this time, retreating to her childhood home on the coast.

There Beth realizes she's put off composing because classical music no longer sings to her, and realizes she'd be happier if she listened to the jazzy blues of her heart. Her husband comes to a similar conclusion, realizing that things will never be as they were, because that was an illusion kept alive by busyness. He needs to slow down, focus on his wife and marriage if he has any hope of having one at all. Beth's eldest daughter is at first perplexed by her mother's changes, but it forcs her to reexamine her own life and ensure she won't resent settling, the way her mother now does.

Flying Lessons tells the story of a family learning to embrace life and happiness. Beth, looking for her self amid the wife, mother, neice, friend lables; her daughter Jenny, leaping into the wild blue yonder looking for direction; her daughter Kate, finding a compromise between being the perfect professionals wife and budding designer; and Beth's husband Howard, who finds that if you stifle your emotions, no one knows how you feel. This is an uplifting, insightful tale of recognizing who you are, and learning to be that person.

Sometimes we have to make the brave & scary choices to make things happen. - Beth