Life at 24,000 Feet - No Place to Run

One of my sisters is a flight attendant, but for a variety of reasons, that is not a job I could ever hold down. One is that I am a spiller of drinks. Another is that I am a bad flier. I'm not neurotic about it, which is to say I've never declined a trip because I don't like to fly. Let's just say I have a reputation. 

Years ago, when I was scheduled to accompany my elderly cousin on a month-long boondoggle to South Africa, the plane we were supposed to take was grounded overnight to have its engine replaced. Maybe it's because I didn't have anything else to do but worry during my unplanned stay in Chantilly, Va., near Dulles Airport--my cousin Abram, 92, had retired to his room, and I hadn't even packed dental floss in my purse to keep me busy. Still, under the best of circumstances it wouldn't sit well with me to fly for 17 hours with an impaired engine and so I calmly phoned the airline and asked why, with its puny fleet of two jets, I should trust them to fix it. Some way into our trip, my cousin told me that our guide had taken him aside and asked why the airline had a record of my being a "nervous traveler." Word had gotten out, I guess. I felt somewhat justified when, mid-trip, South African Airways went bankrupt and we had to fly another carrier home.

Even before that, when I was on a transatlantic flight in my early twenties to visit my then boyfriend in London, the ride was so rough that I grabbed the hand of the man sitting next to me and gripped it for the next four hours. I don't think I ever learned the name of the person who belonged to that hand, but I know that no amount of pleading on his part would have gotten me to release it. I remember his eyes on me when we were waiting for our luggage, but we never spoke. At least that encounter was anonymous.

Despite my history, I was trying to play it cool the other night when the plane from Atlanta, where I'd gone to visit my parents, started to bump around--a lot. I wouldn't be able to save them if thing went down, I thought, looking at Sam and Julia in their pajamas in the seats next to me. Sam was asleep, and Julia seemed oblivious to the roller coaster. Then Julia reached out and took my hand. And by the look she gave me, which made her momentarily more 30 than 3, I could tell it was for me. After all, she had announced just that day that she wants to be a smoke jumper and then a princess when she grows up. In that same conversation, as if to justify her life's ambitions, she told me that she is brave and smart.

I know people say you can learn a lot from kids, but I didn't learn a thing that night at 24,000 feet. I was just glad to have my little girl's pudgy palm in mine. And to know her name.