Spending a moment with a hummingbird can be as fleeting as the sighting of a shooting star. The former flies during the day; the latter, secretly at night. Both are a wonder to behold, yet equally impossible to catch even with the trickiest sleight of hand. Believe me, I've tried.

This little bird is a visitor of the soul that fills our lives with joy and, as legend goes, in its migratory journey from the South to the North of the Americas it is also seen as carrier of good fortune. Still to this day, I make a wish out loud whenever I see one flying around, and I can guarantee a hummingbird knows how to make dreams come true.

At seven I wished to fly, up and away like a hummingbird, super fast across the night like a shooting star. But I just couldn't understand why I was still unable take flight after flapping my arms and running around and around.

At fifteen I tried again, this time without moving my arms. Keep going, my mother would say, until you're old enough to spread out your wings, away from your parental nest. One night, it was a shooting star that had my mother look up and confess the runaway twinkle was a sign of a big change in life. I want to fly, I thought to myself as I gazed up without knowing whose life she was talking about. I asked her twice, but she wouldn't reply.

Over the years hummingbirds have come and gone as lone fliers. So have shooting stars, solo travellers rushing away from their established constellations. Fate or luck, I've finally got my wings to fly full-time, not before migrating from Argentina to Calgary with a stopover in the USA and Europe.

When I'm not dealing with a passenger, I sit at the back of the plane and peer outside. At 36,000 feet, I can't help marveling at the shooting star's ability to slit the sky, secretly glowing a little bit closer and brighter before my eyes. Each time I feel seven years old again, wondering if I'll be agile enough to catch it before it's gone out of sight. I still can't.

Whether in my back yard or thousands of miles above my head, I wish today my two friends the hummingbird and the shooting star could hover longer so that I could photograph their beauty and the magic that comes with them. But they are on their way to other gardens and farther swaths of the sky where there are millions of other wishers awaiting to fly.