Flight Lessons
by Luana Heikes

I sit in a prop-driven airplane from the aeronautical Dark Ages as it taxis down the runway. Didn’t they stop making these planes decades ago, except for those two-seaters that fly low over crops, pilot almost visible from the ground? I look out the window, the propeller a steady (Thank God!) blur less than 10 feet away. I notice the chipped paint and a network of scrapes and gashes on the surface of the motor and wonder how deep the damage goes. Will the whole thing come apart somewhere over Connecticut, the layers of aluminum flaying apart like weathered skin? Are there layers of aluminum? How thick is the metal that encases this plane?

Then we are airborne. The protective skin still intact. The propeller still whirling.

At Security I was chosen for the full body scan. “Hold your feet up. I need to see the bottoms. I’ll be running the wand over your body and will pat you down if the beeper goes off.” No orifice checks, but nothing else left to speculation. Legs spread, arms out. At least no squad car to lean against, but the rest of the drama is just below the surface. I’ve traveled more since 9/11 than I ever had before. This is getting to be “old hat.” Yet it still doesn’t feel quite normal.

As we climb from the Manchester, New Hampshire airport, I look down and see a large cemetery. Headstones in neat uniform rows. I think of military graves but know these are civilian, laid out by a surveyor years ago. I’m thinking, Why is a plane routed over this? when I see another smaller, less-ordered graveyard.

I’m not a fearful person. I live alone. Drive long distances by myself. I fly without accompanying butterflies. Feel hesitant in a plane only over Nebraska or eastern Colorado when it hits turbulence that makes it shudder and jerk. Otherwise I’m a “good” flyer, choosing the window seat so I can see where we are, check out the fields, find landmarks, try to figure out what town is down there below the tip of the wing.

But this time I’m ill at ease. I’m thinking of mortality, safety, or the lack thereof. Is it those darned cemeteries, the security check, the old plane, or being a grandma? That last sounds unlikely but is the correct answer. I’ve just spent a week with my daughter, her husband, and their 20-month-old daughter. Libby, in her short life, has snuggled her way into the number two position in my affection – second only to her mother. I didn’t realize how scary that could be. I find myself thinking of my own mortality. I come home from a visit and faithfully take my vitamins, vow to exercise, to get more sleep, to organize my life. I want to live a long, long time.

But I also am consumed right now with worries about Libby. The what-ifs pile high. The dangers seem to be everywhere. I want to treat her like crystal – keeping her far from any chance of harm. I don’t remember such an obsession with Laura, Libby’s mom. Surely I worried, but I was almost 30 years younger and not in touch with my own finite being, much less with hers. Maybe that’s why fiftysomethings don’t have children. They know too much.

My antennae pick up death and destruction all around. A fraternity pledge dies during hazing and I hear a full report on NPR. I sit in my driveway listening to the mother sobbing. A wedding party in Jordan is bombed and I imagine the bloodied bride and groom and their anguished parents. I think of kidnappings, speeding cars in parking lots, tsunamis hitting the small New Hampshire coastline, an over-turned fishing kayak, a tumble down cement stairs, a hand caught in a food mixer, bathtub drownings, bird flu. I want to call Mike and Laura and tell them to keep Libby inside, wrapped in flannel or “cotton wool” – I like the sound of that, but the visual image reminds me of suffocation.

When Laura went to college in Massachusetts I had to make a decision to not worry about her. Of course, that decision didn’t turn off all my fretting, but it helped that she was 1900 miles away, far beyond my protection and with no desire for it anyway. I didn’t spend hours wondering where she was and whether she was safe or using good judgment. We both survived the four years without my turning every night into a sleepless torment, thinking that she was only safe because I willed her to be.

How do I do the same now with Libby?

As we slow and bank for the approach to La Guardia, I look down and see another cemetery – neat, compact, probably quite old. I wonder again what this means. Then I put the thought aside. Soon I’m crossing the tarmac in a shuttle bus going from one terminal to another to catch my flight to Denver. The driver gives me a mini-tour of the city. “That bridge goes to The Bronx. There’s the Empire State Building. . .the Chrysler Building . . .that’s where the Twin Towers were.” He smiles and says, “We miss them. Every time we flew back from a trip and saw them, my family knew it was time to gather our things.” He says this with fond remembrance, no sadness or fear.

On the flight across country, I think of my own home-coming rituals – locating my car in the lot, the drive north along the Front Range, greeting my cats, slipping back into the ordinary, the secure. As the jet brakes for the landing at Denver International Airport, I look down. No graveyards are in view, just snow-covered farmland. I imagine Libby waking from her nap and cuddling with her mom or dad. She’s safe for now. I am too.

Luana Heikes lives and writes in northern Colorado. She holds undergraduate degrees in elementary education and wildlife biology and a masters degree in English. Presently the editor of a wildlife management/natural resource database, she has been published in Pilgrimage and Colorado Outdoors. She is the mother of a daughter, a step-mother of three, and grandma/step-grandma to three boys and seven girls.

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