Blogging A-Z: F Is for Flying

            I first flew in a plane when I was 19, in 1961. I was going to my second Antioch College co-op job, in Los Angeles. In those days, there was something called “student standby”: if you had a student ID, you could show up at the airport two hours before a scheduled takeoff, and if there was a seat available, you got it for some discount. (This was before deregulation, and flights routinely had empty seats.)

            I was at the airport before 6 a.m. and got on an 8 a.m. flight. Not a particularly adventurous person, I expected to be nervous: inside this metal cannister, tens of thousands of feet in the air. But once inside the plane, buckled into my seat, and staring out the window at puffy clouds and the green and brown earth below, I felt serenely safe. The flight was smooth, and I couldn’t help feeling that my jet was attached by a firm pole to a truck on a highway below. Of course I knew this wasn’t true, but it felt like it could be true. I’ve loved flying ever since, especially that moment when the airplane that’s been lumbering along the runway gracefully lifts off and the ground falls away.

            Jack took his first plane ride, with me, a few years after this. We were on a shuttle flight to Boston before switching to a tiny DC-3 to Montpelier, Vermont. Jack thought he would be nervous, and he was very nervous. He had to have a drink before we boarded, and another as soon as the refreshments were wheeled around. After a few more flights with Jack, his nervousness became contagious; I tried not to be as nervous as he was, but it was hard.

            As the years went by, Jack became somewhat less nervous, but I found it easier to fly without him.

            He did come up with one of his classic teases on a flight to his home in Kansas with our daughter when she was about eight. Looking down at all the lights as we flew over Cleveland, Jack said, “ Look down there. It’s a light-bulb farm.” Christie glanced out the window, gave him a quizzical look, and replied, “That’s just another one of your lies.”

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April’s writing challenge is to blog every day, with each post beginning with a letter of the alphabet from beginning to end. We skip Sundays, except for April 1, so as to have 26 days in the month.