Flying
By Sarah Smallwood

September "Home from the Hill" Contest Winner!

I haven't taken a plane in years. In college, I made it across the ocean to study abroad; sitting paralyzed and staring at the lowest common denominator of movies and trying to forget that I was in the air, over nothing, fifty thousand miles above an ocean. So this should be a piece of cake, easy. I had done six- and seven-hour flights before. What were a pair of two-hour flights compared to that? Ah, but two planes. Two takeoffs, two landings. Double the chances for something to go wrong. In the land of logic and statistics, planes fail—so I'm happy to go on thinking that magic hamsters in little wheels keep them aloft. Hamsters are much cuter than numbers, and you can reason with them.

At the airport gift shop, I buy sugar-free gum for the pressure changes. My ears refuse to pop, so I chew furiously until the pressure equalizes, trying not to cry from the pain (I don't mind; it gives me something to focus on, distracts me for two precious minutes). The imported chocolates catch my eye—ingeniously placed, so travelers can show how much they were thinking of a loved one at the last minute. I look at the gum in my hand, then reach for a bar of 77% cacao dark, figuring if I can't have a lethal dose of narcotics, then by God I will go down with an entire bar of the best chocolate I can get my hands on. This way, if I die, the calories are meaningless; if I live, the extra weight is a small price to pay. I pay for these and bypass the magazines; an inveterate planner, I already have several crosswords and a novel in my bag.

I sit at the gate, trying to concentrate on my book, but I'm really just watching the planes take off, one by one, making sure they all stay in the air. So far, they don't disappoint. I call home from my cell phone for no particular reason and leave a message on the machine. I manage not to tell them I love them all, because then I really would have to die. Finally, we board, and I settle in my smaller-than-I-remember seat, under the lower-than-expected bulkhead. The plane is not new. Strips of veneer are peeling under the storage compartment, revealing what looks like (and it cannot possibly be, so it must be some sort of super-strong, NASA-patented flight material) particle board. I do not see duct tape, but I stop looking for it almost immediately. I open the chocolate bar.

The sky separates into thin layers—a carpet of clouds beneath our feet, the blue sky calming to periwinkle, the crema between turning a tired, dusty pink. In less than five minutes the layers have thickened and blurred, the pink now an unabashed Pepto casting a purplish glow over the patchwork Midwest. Nebraska, Wyoming? I would need a nap. Um, map.

I laughed at the plane's ability to lull me into a nod, then shake me awake the minute my eyes closed. The plane and I are teasing and humoring each other, like a mother and her baby, each completely convinced they're the one in control.

I have only fallen asleep once on a flight, after being awake some seventeen hours, finally collapsing into the seat next to me somewhere over the ocean, Anger Management having lost its tenuous grip on my consciousness. I woke up to a breakfast tray and orange light reflected on the ceiling. We were above the sunrise. I may have been overcome by beauty, or giddy because the ground had reappeared beneath us in the night. In any case, I wept openly into my bagel.

I chomp my gum as the wheels catch and drag down the runway. One down. The second plane is delayed.
The passengers deplane.
It needs to be de-iced.
I am de-pleased.

I decide that I will board this plane even if it has no wings, no pilot and an exposed, sparking engine if it means I can get out of this goddamn line.

I'm lying. Thankfully, I note as I board that it's a moot point.

The plane banks, and the view pours straight down. I hold my breath and take a picture, but I know that it will never turn out the way I'm seeing it now. It would be like all the fuzzy shots of Glendalough and the Royal Mile taken with my non-digital camera; friends would squint and wonder why I kept them—especially when I had so many to spare. The blurred shot of the tartan and drum shops, and now this shot of Chicago from the lee side of a DC9 won't mean the same thing to my family as it does to me. It's another picture of what you don't see; it's me standing in the rain with a wilted egg-and-cress sandwich, Janelle trying her damnedest to get us all killed crossing a four-lane highway to catch our train, Jensy with Nutella still on her face from the street vendor's crepes. And this picture that won't turn out, this one is me clutching the armrests with the whispered assertions of convents and celibacy if we could, if it's not too big a bother, just stay in the air.

Turbulence. Ugh.

No, not ‘ugh.' Eeep? Ow. It's hard to turn terror into a word. It makes you think—the last thing you want to do—evaluate, reckon, resign. Every one of us gets on, knows the risks, all suspending our disbelief, and now the bridge is shaking under us. It's personal and quiet. Probably someone is praying.

The only thing that helps me is to let my brain run amok until it seizes on a word that eases the rattling, then repeat it until the plane resumes its comfortable hum: trees, coconut, sun, warm, kittens, curtains, vindaloo, train, train, train. If this fails, absurdity takes the wheel; today, a repeated, off-key rendition of "Sunshine on my Shoulders" sung directly to the engine outside my window. "Makes me hap-py…"

We stop shaking. Turbulence makes us a ‘we.'

Twelve minutes to landing. As the sun sets behind us, the orange glint underneath the plane makes it look for all the world like the engine is on fire. I laugh at the thought, deliriously, thinking how that image would have made me panic only one hour ago, when I was ten years younger. I think, restlessly, that maybe dogs don't age faster; maybe they're frequent fliers. I giggle at my own weak joke, unfit for the easiest of audiences, because it will burn thirty seconds and keep the plane in the air. Everything I do keeps the plane in the air, until it doesn't anymore.

I hear the bay doors open underneath me. With my eyes closed, I hum another chorus of John Denver. When I open them, a man with a beard and glasses was looking at me. Somebody's dad, but not mine. I smile at him, knowing I'll see my own parents in a few minutes, having come off the plane safely once again. They missed me, They're proud, How do I do this, I'm just so brave. It's easier if they don't know. Only chocolate knows the truth, and my stalwart copilot would never tell a soul.

——

Sarah Smallwood was totally kidding about the celibacy. She can be reached through her long-documented salute to ennui, The Other Shoe. She lives in Michigan.

Read more from Sarah Smallwood.

Read more from Fact.