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rmThis is the story of how I never got my wings.
Air travel in the 1970s was the death of one world and the rise of another. Stewardesses always wore high heels and my mother always brought fried chicken packed in plastic produce bags from Gristedes. People flew Economy, not Coach, and you could smoke on planes.
When we boarded, I was always given a kit with riddles and games, children's crosswords and coloring, one of those puzzles with the sliding numbered tiles you had to get in the right order, and a pair of plastic pilots wings in a silvery grey. I always made my mother pin them on me immediately and I would sit proudly, kicking my legs and shushing my parents when they tried to talk to me about my hopes and dreams because I was busy imagining things.
If you had asked me then what I wanted to do when I grew up I would provide you a list of things the 1970s had told me would make me beautiful. I would be a cocktail waitress, a star, a lady of the evening (not that I knew what that was), a stewardess. But if you asked again after I had uttered those obligations, I would say I wanted to be a pilot.
I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to be a pilot because you had to be a pilot first to be an astronaut second and if you were a pilot and an astronaut crazy things might happen to you and it would be like Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I really, really wanted to see the 25th Century. This embarrassed my mother, my wild fancies, but it made my father laugh joyfully, and he would always stop the stewardesses who went about asking families with boys if they wanted to see the cockpit and say his daughter wanted to go too. And so his daughter did.
There were lights and wires and switches, a million instances of hope and knowledge in that tight little world. The stewardesses would always crouch next to me in the cockpit, one hand on my shoulder, the other around my waist, as if to steady a girl who might be scared of all those buttons or foolish enough to touch them, but the pilots always took me seriously, shook my hand to get me out of hers, and I was grateful to them, grateful enough that I never told them about space or the future, but thanked them politely with the curt nod I have always had, my feet neat and pressed together in my blue lace-up leather shoes.
I have a secret though, and that is that I hated flying. It was painful, and still is. I have severe sinus problems because the inside of my face isn't formed right and what is discomfort for you in the air is agonizing pain for me. My parents took me to doctors over it, but the only way to fix it was surgery and I informed them I would run away if they made me do it. Medication that would help I can't take because of my heart, and as soon as I was old enough I avoided air travel like the plague. You don't get to the 25th century by crying on airplanes because your ears hurt.
In the years I didn't fly PanAm gave way to MetLife, children were no longer given plastic wings, Economy became Coach, cigarettes went out, and stewardesses got shorter. And then I went to Chicago to cover the 1996 Democratic National Convention for the Associated Press. I had to fly.
To my immense relief, I wasn't traveling with any coworkers. No one would see me cry, and I had these funny little EarPlane devices that went in my ears that were supposed to help. I insisted on a window seat so that I could hide my pain in the bright blue sky and I held my breath as the plane took off, loving the eternal eerie strangeness that is the pressure in my chest as the world tilts back.
I looked out that window the entire trip, lower lip caught on my crooked teeth, and saw something amazing. I saw another plane go by. We were flying! Really, in a sky full of other things. Planes had never felt like that to me before -- you got in the tin can in one place, you got out of the tin can in another. That was all, and I wanted to go to Mars, but there were other things up here, and when I got back to New York I decided to take flying lessons.
Learning to fly in New York City meant getting up at 5am, taking a cab to Port Authority, taking a bus to Teterboro Airport, walking a half mile to the hangars and plunking down $45 for an initial 30 minute lesson.
I hated it. If you've never been in a two-seat Cessna, there is nothing powerful or soaring about it. It's like a bucking, wafting, vibrating lawnmower in the sky, too narrow even for my shoulders.
"What did you think?" my instructor, a man even tinier than I, asked.
"Where do I sign up?"
See, someone like me should know how to fly and not liking it wasn't going to stop me; the future awaited and my instructor swore up and down that the four-seater would feel a little heavier. I bought books and a headset, enrolled in ground school, and once a week did the arduous trek to Teterboro to fly for an hour before work.
I loved my plane, well, the plane I rented. I'm like that; I love machinery and putting my hands in it, humming to it. I loved climbing on top of her wings to do the pre-flight check, loved the black jeans and frayed sweater I always wore that smelled like jet fuel from the tank check, loved rapping my open palm against the flank of my borrowed machine, loved the feel of my long hair blowing crazily on the tarmac like I was actually beautiful. The rest of it I could get used to.
And I did. Even the nausea in summer (flights are smoother in the winter when the air is heavier) and two pretty frightening experiences: one when the door on my side opened in the air and another where as we flew into a bright blue sky a storm came up behind us. When we turned around to go back, we were flying directly into it, and there was rain and our rapidly dropping air speed.
I should tell you that I have never been so scared in my life, but it wasn't like that, more focused and murmuring "planes drop out of the sky if their airspeed goes below 80" and watching the needle drop and saying come on, come on, fuck! as if we could will the plane through the storm and across the highway (Teterboro has the most horrifying landing path I can possibly describe) and down in one precious piece. And we could and we did.
When we landed, I took the plane in, checked her out and made sure the blocks were solid around her wheels, and when we were done my instructor grabbed my arm.
"Look, this isn't any more dangerous than riding a motorcycle," he said, "but if you do this, you will know people who die from it."
I nodded.
"Just don't be one of them."
I nodded again.
These were great golden days to learn how to fly. 9/11 hadn't happened yet, and we didn't even have to file a plan to fly up the Hudson or check out of the Statue of Liberty; I have done things no one will ever be able to do quite like that again. And because we were flying out of Teterboro the air was full of things other than us, which meant I could feel like a real pilot with buttons and switches and dreams of jets and futures instead of a girl child with a vibrating, bouncing, beat up, $75,000 toy.
A few more lessons, but life changed. I ran out of money, out of time. My boyfriend and I broke up. Rent went up. Physics was hard. 5am was killing me. I never soloed. One day, I would get back to her.
That was over ten years ago, and I haven't been up since, although I still have my log book, my headset, the texts. It's more expensive than horses or fencing and it never, ever stopped scaring me, although I think I would be better at it now. I understand more about certitude and how it keeps you alive. I understand more about how important it is to have the experience of being fully responsible for your life and your death by skill and intellect and will and the quickness of your hands. I understand more about my nature, about love, about the machines I have always talked to, about the girl I was in the arms of stewardesses in the cockpits of commercial jets in 1978. I remember their bleached blond hair and their perfume.
I would like to get back to flying one day, get my license, fly solo, be alone up there with something I can never have quite the way I imagined it as a child. And if I don't, that will be okay too because at least when I die I will be able to say that I flew. Even if I will never get to Mars. Even if I will never see the 25th century. And even if I never got my wings beyond the plastic ones that I still have in a drawer in my parents house because when I was small they really meant something to me and some days they still do.
Air travel in the 1970s was the death of one world and the rise of another. Stewardesses always wore high heels and my mother always brought fried chicken packed in plastic produce bags from Gristedes. People flew Economy, not Coach, and you could smoke on planes.
When we boarded, I was always given a kit with riddles and games, children's crosswords and coloring, one of those puzzles with the sliding numbered tiles you had to get in the right order, and a pair of plastic pilots wings in a silvery grey. I always made my mother pin them on me immediately and I would sit proudly, kicking my legs and shushing my parents when they tried to talk to me about my hopes and dreams because I was busy imagining things.
If you had asked me then what I wanted to do when I grew up I would provide you a list of things the 1970s had told me would make me beautiful. I would be a cocktail waitress, a star, a lady of the evening (not that I knew what that was), a stewardess. But if you asked again after I had uttered those obligations, I would say I wanted to be a pilot.
I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to be a pilot because you had to be a pilot first to be an astronaut second and if you were a pilot and an astronaut crazy things might happen to you and it would be like Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I really, really wanted to see the 25th Century. This embarrassed my mother, my wild fancies, but it made my father laugh joyfully, and he would always stop the stewardesses who went about asking families with boys if they wanted to see the cockpit and say his daughter wanted to go too. And so his daughter did.
There were lights and wires and switches, a million instances of hope and knowledge in that tight little world. The stewardesses would always crouch next to me in the cockpit, one hand on my shoulder, the other around my waist, as if to steady a girl who might be scared of all those buttons or foolish enough to touch them, but the pilots always took me seriously, shook my hand to get me out of hers, and I was grateful to them, grateful enough that I never told them about space or the future, but thanked them politely with the curt nod I have always had, my feet neat and pressed together in my blue lace-up leather shoes.
I have a secret though, and that is that I hated flying. It was painful, and still is. I have severe sinus problems because the inside of my face isn't formed right and what is discomfort for you in the air is agonizing pain for me. My parents took me to doctors over it, but the only way to fix it was surgery and I informed them I would run away if they made me do it. Medication that would help I can't take because of my heart, and as soon as I was old enough I avoided air travel like the plague. You don't get to the 25th century by crying on airplanes because your ears hurt.
In the years I didn't fly PanAm gave way to MetLife, children were no longer given plastic wings, Economy became Coach, cigarettes went out, and stewardesses got shorter. And then I went to Chicago to cover the 1996 Democratic National Convention for the Associated Press. I had to fly.
To my immense relief, I wasn't traveling with any coworkers. No one would see me cry, and I had these funny little EarPlane devices that went in my ears that were supposed to help. I insisted on a window seat so that I could hide my pain in the bright blue sky and I held my breath as the plane took off, loving the eternal eerie strangeness that is the pressure in my chest as the world tilts back.
I looked out that window the entire trip, lower lip caught on my crooked teeth, and saw something amazing. I saw another plane go by. We were flying! Really, in a sky full of other things. Planes had never felt like that to me before -- you got in the tin can in one place, you got out of the tin can in another. That was all, and I wanted to go to Mars, but there were other things up here, and when I got back to New York I decided to take flying lessons.
Learning to fly in New York City meant getting up at 5am, taking a cab to Port Authority, taking a bus to Teterboro Airport, walking a half mile to the hangars and plunking down $45 for an initial 30 minute lesson.
I hated it. If you've never been in a two-seat Cessna, there is nothing powerful or soaring about it. It's like a bucking, wafting, vibrating lawnmower in the sky, too narrow even for my shoulders.
"What did you think?" my instructor, a man even tinier than I, asked.
"Where do I sign up?"
See, someone like me should know how to fly and not liking it wasn't going to stop me; the future awaited and my instructor swore up and down that the four-seater would feel a little heavier. I bought books and a headset, enrolled in ground school, and once a week did the arduous trek to Teterboro to fly for an hour before work.
I loved my plane, well, the plane I rented. I'm like that; I love machinery and putting my hands in it, humming to it. I loved climbing on top of her wings to do the pre-flight check, loved the black jeans and frayed sweater I always wore that smelled like jet fuel from the tank check, loved rapping my open palm against the flank of my borrowed machine, loved the feel of my long hair blowing crazily on the tarmac like I was actually beautiful. The rest of it I could get used to.
And I did. Even the nausea in summer (flights are smoother in the winter when the air is heavier) and two pretty frightening experiences: one when the door on my side opened in the air and another where as we flew into a bright blue sky a storm came up behind us. When we turned around to go back, we were flying directly into it, and there was rain and our rapidly dropping air speed.
I should tell you that I have never been so scared in my life, but it wasn't like that, more focused and murmuring "planes drop out of the sky if their airspeed goes below 80" and watching the needle drop and saying come on, come on, fuck! as if we could will the plane through the storm and across the highway (Teterboro has the most horrifying landing path I can possibly describe) and down in one precious piece. And we could and we did.
When we landed, I took the plane in, checked her out and made sure the blocks were solid around her wheels, and when we were done my instructor grabbed my arm.
"Look, this isn't any more dangerous than riding a motorcycle," he said, "but if you do this, you will know people who die from it."
I nodded.
"Just don't be one of them."
I nodded again.
These were great golden days to learn how to fly. 9/11 hadn't happened yet, and we didn't even have to file a plan to fly up the Hudson or check out of the Statue of Liberty; I have done things no one will ever be able to do quite like that again. And because we were flying out of Teterboro the air was full of things other than us, which meant I could feel like a real pilot with buttons and switches and dreams of jets and futures instead of a girl child with a vibrating, bouncing, beat up, $75,000 toy.
A few more lessons, but life changed. I ran out of money, out of time. My boyfriend and I broke up. Rent went up. Physics was hard. 5am was killing me. I never soloed. One day, I would get back to her.
That was over ten years ago, and I haven't been up since, although I still have my log book, my headset, the texts. It's more expensive than horses or fencing and it never, ever stopped scaring me, although I think I would be better at it now. I understand more about certitude and how it keeps you alive. I understand more about how important it is to have the experience of being fully responsible for your life and your death by skill and intellect and will and the quickness of your hands. I understand more about my nature, about love, about the machines I have always talked to, about the girl I was in the arms of stewardesses in the cockpits of commercial jets in 1978. I remember their bleached blond hair and their perfume.
I would like to get back to flying one day, get my license, fly solo, be alone up there with something I can never have quite the way I imagined it as a child. And if I don't, that will be okay too because at least when I die I will be able to say that I flew. Even if I will never get to Mars. Even if I will never see the 25th century. And even if I never got my wings beyond the plastic ones that I still have in a drawer in my parents house because when I was small they really meant something to me and some days they still do.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 04:56 pm (UTC)(I still have my plastic wings-they stopped making them with pins and used stickers on the back instead, weren't really the same)
I have a picture of me in the cockpit of the plane I flew to London at 15-we were grounded for 7 hours because of engine trouble (exactly what you want to hear before you fly for 7 more hours...however, this was before I was scared of planes). Me and my friend Sherisse hung out in the cockpit, laughing and talking with the pilots and seeing pictures of their families while hugging the stuff animals our significant others had given us. Those pilots were AWESOME guys. They let us each sit in the pilot seat and in turn took our pictures. It's one of the ones I want to frame as Ian and I set up our place.
How amazing that you actually flew. I am very jealous and impressed.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 05:15 pm (UTC)I really miss the days when the airline industry was about something other than despair.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 07:17 pm (UTC)Yeah, I miss those days too. Despair and fear. Don't forget the fear!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 08:18 pm (UTC)That killed me!! Him getting all annoyed at Rose's family chatting about bullshit while he's trying to watch?
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 05:51 pm (UTC)My mother was terrified, I was elated.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 06:18 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 09:36 pm (UTC)But I stood for hours, there with my bicycle, watching the small craft as they took off and landed.
Every summer, my parents would take me to at least one Blue Angels performance - bright, hot, blue air with sleek planes blazing around and through. I dreamed of being in those planes.
When I was a little bit older, I learned that one could learn to fly by joining the Air Force. Though I think of this now with profound relief, at the time I was utterly crushed to learn that my poor eyesight would prevent me from being an Air Force pilot.
Part of what makes today's awfulness of flying so awful is the memories of those days when it was a family jaunt, filled with excitement and joy, and that everything about that has been crushed from the experience.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 01:07 am (UTC)I was flying transatlantic when I was six months old; I all but grew up in airports and on planes. I even had the added glamour (back when it was a glamour thing) of having a special passport and, sometimes, getting to fly in Business Class, because we were Important. I all but sneered at short domestic flights; if it wasn't Pan Am or at least four hours it was nothing to get excited about.
And I treasured my wings, and if I couldn't be a pilot, I'd be a stewardess on the Pan Am flight to the Moon. My aunt had been a stewardess, which I thought was very glamorous, but my mother suggested I consider being a pilot instead. I said if I was gonna fly something it was gonna be a rocket ship, and she always encouraged that.
By the time I had career aptitude tests, and the days of diplomatic flying were almost over, I had admitted to myself that my eyesight and overall health wouldn't make it through the military flight school path, and so I had decided to be a scientist-astronaut instead. I wanted to be the next Carl Sagan, a planetary biologist, a space medicine doctor. But I wasn't good at math, and I was ADD and a girl, and they took that dream away as well. And I cried when Pan Am stopped flying, which still hurts.
And then the Lockerbie bombing happened, something which nobody remembers these days, but I knew people who were on that flight, and I'd taken that flight a hundred times. And I'd always known that planes could be hijacked or blown up. 9/11 felt like an intrusion of my reality into the collective conscious of America, and while I regretted their shock and hurt and anger, I admit I was not at all surprised, and sort of holed they would learn something from it. (Instead of succumbing to fear and anger, and... what we have instead.)
Stripped of my space dreams, flunking out of college, I decided to become a paramedic and a life flight helicopter pilot, and that too fell apart and life took me down other paths.
I used to love flying. Even though I'd often spend a day afterwards with my head on a heating pad drugged up on painkillers. And after my tonsils came out, my sinus problems improved dramatically, and it no longer hurt to fly. And they've taken that joy from us, and it makes me angry.
My other half was, for a while, suffering crippling levels of sinus pain when he flew, and he confessed that he was secretly terrified that it meant he could never go into space, and that he was less of a human for this. Fortunately we've found drugs he can take which allow him to fly, now; I wish there was something safe for you.
I hate flying now. Being a cripple and flying is just torturous, painful and embarrassing and emasculating, and I don't know how anyone who is worse off than I am can manage it. I refuse to let the baggage handlers have my powerchair, so I'm stuck with a manual chair in which I can't push myself, and the airplane seats are not just smaller and shorter than when I was a kid because I am taller now, and the pressure changes make everything hurt - and if it's bad, I have to ask for them to help me stand, which humiliates me. And to think I once wanted to be them. I wanted wings, and I can't even walk unaided?
But my heart still leaps at the smell of dirt and fuel that is an airport, and I still smile at the sleek sky-looking architecture of Dulles, and I still lust after Really Good Luggage, because in that childhood world, a Samsonite suitcase was a thing of importance and beauty and duty. And even this stupid icon swaps off between sarcastic Internet meme and yearning for a past in which I flew through Charles de Gaulle and its Buck Rogers architecture, on a moving sidewalk in a plastic space age transparent tube, towing a Samsonite, and full of hope.
We'll see how my next airplane flight goes.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 05:36 am (UTC)I hated it. If you've never been in a two-seat Cessna, there is nothing powerful or soaring about it. It's like a bucking, wafting, vibrating lawnmower in the sky, too narrow even for my shoulders.
My dad's Cessna 172 was the biggest thing in the world because I only flew in it when I was a single-digit age, maybe as much as 11, but I think that's stretching it. We flew places I could easily drive to today, but back in the time when the place I would eventually go to high school was another country (i.e. less than 2 miles away), then places we got to by air were another bloody planet.
I kept meaning to learn to fly, and it never happened. Eventually he sold the plane because he wasn't flying it anymore, couldn't pass a medical, and it was just prohibitive to keep paying the insurance, tie-down fees, and all on a big piece of property that was getting no use.