Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner just took off from its Everett, Wash., facilities as I watched on live TV.

She’s a beautiful bird, sleek, with gracefully tapered wings, and painted in flowing cloud-like blues and white. Like the Boeing workers who cheered from the tarmac when she took the sky, I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. Something about beautiful planes does that to me. Spectacular machines lifting men into avian realms. Like watching a young bird rise on newfound wings. It’s moving, exciting, awe-inspiring.

One camera had a head-on view of her, just before she began her take-off roll, and her two engines looked absolutely huge. Such power on a revolutionary, lightweight composite body — like some of our most advanced military planes. Yet so beautiful. I was struck by how, even on a rainy, overcast day, her colors and lines echoed those of the mountains below and clouds above as she disappeared into the distance.

She’s been much delayed and much maligned, but she’s airborne at last. It’s her time, finally, and I wish her well.