Flight Risk

This is the first trip I’ve flown to since starting my blog. I used to love flying—the vertigo of the take-off, the look of clouds from the inside, the cranberry juice (morning flights) and ginger ale (afternoon and evening flights), the patchwork earth viewed from above, the rapid deceleration on landing. In recent years, however, I’ve become a worse flyer. I don’t think it’s related to 9-11, although we were on the east coast at the time and had to fly through Logan just a couple days after it re-opened (it was a disorganized nightmare, even worse than before the tragedy). Rather, I think my sense of my own mortality is increasing as I age, and I’m less comfortable in situations where I’m not in control. This got to the irrational point where I, during turbulence, would visualize a giant beam of light coming from the center of the earth and holding up the plane . . . and then I was afraid that if my concentration on my vision failed, the plane would plunge, screaming through the air, 35,000 feet to explode into a gory fireball. Anyway. The height of my phobia came last January, when we were flying to Hawaii. It was a turbulent flight. And there’s something about turbulence over the open ocean that’s even more terrifying than over ground—maybe because a crash won’t necessarily be recovered? Anyway, for about 2 hours approaching Honolulu, it was all I could do to keep counting my breaths, over and over, one to ten, one to ten, trying to keep from hyperventilating. My heart raced, my stomach churned, I struggled to keep from crying (an aside—I’m quite calm in an actual emergency), and finally we landed, safe and sound, in tropical paradise.

I decided after that experience, though, that I needed to change something. The stress hormones pouring into my system weren’t doing anyone any good. Either I needed to get over my fears, or I needed to not fly anymore.

Not fly? Okay . . . take a boat to Kenya when I go back someday? Drive to Santa Fe? I do, actually, think both things would be fun, but I don’t have the time, given the option of flight, to do them. So there it is. I’m going to fly, and I’m not going to be scared. I’ve made my decision.

I can, however, still be uncomfortable. There are no direct flights from Seattle to anywhere in New Mexico, so we went through Denver. Our plane took off from Seatac at 7:30 am, so I’d had time to make my morning latte (there’s always time for that), but not time to make it through the several resultant trips to the bathroom. We’d taken our time at the terminal, buying a magazine and a bagel, piddling once; and by the time we were done, our flight had boarded completely and they were announcing last call. And then they called us specifically, but we were there and rushed on.

We were in middle and window seats, and the middle-aged gent in the aisle looked askance at me when I said we were in his row. As soon as we were seated, he fell asleep. Relatively soon after that, Ian fell asleep. I drank an entire can of cranberry juice, and slowly realized that sleep was not in the cards for me. I started to have to pee. Then it was well-established, but Ian and the man slumbered on. We hit some small patches of turbulence but I barely even noticed. I had to pee worse and worse. Finally, we were only about 30 minutes out. Then 20, then 10 and we’d started our descent. That’s it, I was stuck now. I pulled out the United airline magazine, Hemispheres, and started doing the crossword. I wished there was enough room to sit on my heel, as I used to do in the car riding home from Renton (about 20 minutes from our house) when I was little and Mom wouldn’t stop somewhere for me. “Sit on your heel,” she’d say, and I’d forget my need by the time we got home. But we all know that airline seats don’t allow for any maneuvering at all, let alone a maneuver that involves sitting on one’s heel. Ian woke up and started talking to me. I tried to ignore him and focus on the crossword, which was easy enough to be distracting. He persisted; finally I said “Look. I really have to pee. All I can do is the crossword right now. Oh, but when we arrive, could you bend down and pull my back pack from under the seat in front of me?” I remembered the last time I had had to pee so bad—it was at a movie, one with Goldie Hawn as a witch, I think, and I kept thinking it was almost over (well, it should’ve been) so I didn’t bother to get up and leave, and by the time it was finally over, I had to pee so bad I couldn’t even stand up straight as I rushed to the bathroom. Now, I sat clenched and wondered if I would have to buy pants at the Denver airport. And then I wondered if we would have a soft landing. And then I focused just a bit more on the crossword, and then there was a little turbulence but it didn’t bother me at all except to set me thinking again about pants at the airport, and then I unbuttoned my pants, and then we landed—very softly, I’m pleased to report—and eventually everyone made their ways off the plane and I was able to pee. I must have lost about 5 pounds. In the hour and a half we had before catching our next plane to Albuquerque, we passed the one place in the terminal selling pants: “Denver Pizazz,” full of gold lamé and sequins and animal prints. I admit it, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t need to stop.