On Fear and Flying

My seatmate on the airplane had a cough. It was a shallow cough, like he had something stuck in there. As the little instructional video played, the cough took on a punctuating rhythm: “To fasten your seatbelt…” (cough, cough) “pull tightly toward you…” (cough, cough).

I glanced over. He seemed distressed.  It would be a while before the flight attendants made their rounds with drinks, so I dug around in my purse and found a cough drop to offer him.

The man’s face lit up. He rejected the cough drop but grabbed my arm with both hands, thanking me over and over. My new best buddy leaned close. His breath should have come with a warning: keep away from open flame.  Eyes slightly glazed, he explained, “I cough when I’m nervous. And I’m absolutely terrified of flying.”

I nodded sympathetically, and my companion launched into his life story as we taxied down the runway. The faster we rolled, the faster he talked and the tighter he clutched my arm. With a little hop, we were airborne. Finally he turned, relaxed his grip and asked what I’d been doing in Ecuador. I explained that I grew up there and was visiting family. “Ah,” he nodded. “So you speak Spanish?”

“Yes,” I answered and switched languages. He stuck to English. He told me about his children. The flight attendants made the rounds. I had a glass of water. My buddy had two bottles of wine. 

“So,” he asked, filling the silence while he filled his glass, “what took you to Ecuador?” I explained again: grew up there, visiting family. “Ah,” he nodded. “So… did you learn any Spanish?”

The man wasn’t actually listening, just trying to drown out the fear. I smiled and nodded. He began nodding. The wine kicked in and he drifted off to sleep. I sipped my water and pondered the nature of fear.

I’ve never been afraid of flying. When I was little, I would undo my seatbelt on flights just to see how high the turbulence could bounce me. (Once, I flew so high that my head hit the console above me. I was too impressed to cry.)

On the other hand, I won’t willingly drive on tall one-lane overpasses.

If I find myself forced onto a high, skinny bridge, every sense goes on high alert. My heart pounds. My hands sweat. I creep along at a death-defying 5 miles an hour until I reach the crest and start the slow descent to solid ground.

Where my flight buddy feared what he could not control, what sucks the air out of my lungs is the sense that I might irrevocably and disastrously screw up what I do control. Either way, it’s fear. And the thing about fear is that the more we focus on it, the louder it becomes. Don’t try to explain why I won’t fall off that bridge – at that moment, I can't hear you. 

As I sat on my flight pondering the consuming nature of fear, we hit some impressive turbulence. Trays rattled. A sideways glance at my seatmate showed white knuckles gripping the armrest.

“Wheee!”  There was a sudden shriek of delight in front of me.

A little girl – maybe 5 or 6 – had her hands in the air, giggling wildly. “Look, Mommy!” she squealed as we bounced around.  “It’s making me dance!”

I wanted to throw my arms up and squeal right along with her, but this is the age of cell phone video. My own grownupness made me a little sad. When we don’t have control anyway, what’s a little dignity?

We landed safely. Once off the plane, I made a mad dash for Customs. There wasn't much time before my connecting flight. Once through security, I pulled out my boarding pass to check the gate. It was at the opposite end of the airport. My feet were beginning to hurt, I was hot and it was hard to go faster than a trudge, but I pointed myself in the right direction and started out. 

Beep. Bee-beep. An airport cart pulled up beside me.

 

“Do you need a ride--?” the young man started to ask, but by then my carry-on suitcase was on board and I was following suit.  

The driver was young and solemn-faced. He took his job very seriously and at full speed. We slalomed around other passengers and flew down hallways. We went so fast that the wind blew my hair back from my face. I couldn’t help grinning.

I thought of the little girl on the airplane and the little girl I was before I knew about tall overpasses; I thought of my seatmate and his white knuckles; I thought of how fear seduces our modern world into searching out every talking head and website that validates the terror du jour.

 

And as we sped down the halls of Miami International I threw jazz hands in the air and, mindful of my youthful driver’s dignity, loudly whispered, “Wheee!”

 

 

Redemption

In the garden of my will, you made me.

Like you, but not.

Steward, not God.
Authority given
through service required,
And yet I reached for more.
To be -
not like you,
but as you.
In that one, fatal grasp
at what I could not wield,
I settled for a lesser plan,
a smaller world.

In the desert of my choice, you met me.

Manna, not stone;

Service, not self;
Dominion laid down,
by authority owned.
My wilderness awash in wine,
You came –
not like me
but as me.
The sword I could not
lift, you raised
to sever bonds
that would release
a greater plan,
a higher world.

And in the garden of your will be done, I am remade.  

-cs ©2015

Or

My seatmate on the flight from Miami was visibly confused.  She saw me pull out my book (in English), overheard me speaking (in Spanish), and kept shooting little glances my way that suggested I might be up to no good.  When we landed in Quito and were waiting to disembark she finally blurted out, "So - are you from here or from there?"

It's a question TCKs (third culture kids) hear regularly and to which we often have a variety of answers:

  ·   Both

  ·   Yes
  ·   It's complicated
  ·   When?
  ·   You want the long story or the short?
and so on. We can't help it; our worlds are not necessarily defined by the geopolitical boundaries described by a desktop globe.

I got to thinking about those boundaries and why we create them. Political power. Ideology. History. Family structure. Culture. Religion. You could probably add one or two.
 

The funny thing is, those reasons are reasons that are common to us all. Even our boundaries fail to fully divide.

When I was in junior high, my parents lived in a small town in the foothills of the Andes. I went to boarding school in the capital city, a three-hour bus ride away. There was one other family in town whose children attended the same school. On occasion, our parents would coordinate our travel so that the younger of us would always have an older teen to watch out for us.

After one particular holiday, bus space up to the capital was at a premium. The scene at the town square that served as an informal terminal for interprovincial buses was chaotic.  Mud everywhere, dogs underfoot, people heading to market, and in the midst of the madness attendants hung from bus doors yelling the names of their destinations.  "A Quito a Quitoooo!" "Esmeraldas, Esmeraldas, vamoooos!"  When a person's city was called, there was a push through the crowd to ask how many seats were available. You had to beat anyone else who might be pushing through the same crowd to claim the few seats up for grabs. So on that day, my friend Gwen and I stayed back with our moms and her brother Guy, while our dads did the requisite work to find us seats.
 

They could only get two seats on one bus that would arrive before it was too dark. Guy - our designated "older teen" - would have to come alone on a later bus.  Gwen and I were given the strictest of instructions to Stay Inside the Bus Terminal in Quito Until Guy Arrived.  Emphatic instructions. Repeated instructions. You'd think our parents knew us or something.
 

And so, we boarded.The interprovincial buses were all the same. Three seats to each side of each row meant there was always some stranger in close proximity. You hoped they didn't fall asleep on you. There were unscheduled stops along the way to unload passengers or pick up new ones waiting hopefully by the highway. There was always someone selling food, eating food or sharing food.
 

We got to Quito and the manager of the bus terminal told Gwen and me that our parents had called. Guy would be arriving in two hours. He fixed an authoritative adult eye on us and told us sternly to Sit Inside the Terminal Until Then. No Exceptions. 
 

As I'm not sure whether the statute of limitations on teenage adventures has yet expired, the rest of that particular tale will go untold for now. 

But yesterday, for the first time since high school, I rode an interprovincial bus. No longer confined to a series of little shop fronts on a busy street downtown, the Quito bus terminal looks more like an airport. A ticket agent pulled up the bus plan on her computer, selected my seat and took my fare with a smile. A young man in uniform checked my ticket before allowing me through the turnstile to the boarding area.

I climbed the steps into my bus. Two seats to each side of the row. Reclining seats. A small portion of the TV screen at the front of the bus showed the time, temperature, estimated time of departure and reminded everyone to ride safely.

What a difference time makes, I thought! It was a whole other world now, I thought! 

Then we pulled out of our bay and onto the open road.
 

Twenty minutes later, we reached a toll booth. The bus doors flew open. An attendant leaned out of the open doorway yelling, "A Baños, a Bañooooos!" Several people came running with their bags in tow. 
 

Food vendors barked offers of sliced mangoes, fresh empanadas and (of course) allullas, those little hard rolls that break apart, melt in your mouth and taste like home. 
 

I gained a seatmate, a highland Indian woman who seemed to feel that the seats were much too big. For the next hour, she rode snuggled against my arm. 

At one unscheduled stop, a large group of teenagers boarded. One sat down in the seat vacated by the snuggler. About ten minutes later, he turned and yelled to his buddies in the back of the bus. "Why are we going to Baños?" he asked.

Spurred by the same protective instinct as that terminal operator decades ago, I shot a glance at this unaccompanied cub. 
 

"Because!" came the answer from the back of the bus. He nodded, content.
 

I was overwhelmed with echoes. He was me, 40 years ago. I was now the resident grown-up. All the players were there; my role had just changed.

So perhaps my boundaries of time were as flimsy as the boundaries we create around space.

Perhaps, when you push aside age, politics and geography, you just find people.

Perhaps I should have told my neighbor on the plane: "There is no or".

02-20-05.....02-20-15

We've all been there, or at least most of us have.

We've all felt the earth stand terribly, terribly still.

Our brains do funny things when that happens. I knew John was gone the moment the ambulance driver told me it wouldn't make a difference which hospital we used. 

Family gathered at the hospital. Thank you, Family, for not smacking me when I announced - standing there by your dad, brother, uncle - that I was donating all his clothes to the homeless shelter. You couldn't know that all through the ambulance ride I kept thinking that John was a man who would literally give the shirt off his back to someone in need, and the homeless shelter had lots of someones in need.

My father, who had flown to Ecuador the day before, caught the next flight back. Someone made supper. My aunts called. The world hung suspended and time carved out a little place for us to bleed.

That night, I wrote a poem. I wondered how it was even possible that I could breathe when John wasn't.

I could tell you about the funeral. It's kind of a blur but I do remember afterward hugging anyone who came within my orbit, telling them how much John loved them. It was true, of course, but I'm pretty sure some people wondered where I hid the flask.  I could mention the teenager who stopped by the casket to slide his lip ring into the buttonhole of John's shirt. I could tell you about John's brother playing the harmonica and my brother reading the eulogy. But the family, the friends, the special songs -- you've been there, too.   

After the funeral, someone asked about my future plans. I have no idea what I said. Later, at home, I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to wrap my mind around even two more weeks. It left me nauseated. So I made a deal with myself.  The world might be starting up again, but all I had to do was breathe for one more day.

Days became weeks. Weeks snuck into months. One afternoon found me sitting on the same edge of the same bed, explaining to God for the umpteen-eleventh time just how badly death stinks.

And you've been there, too.

Then a scenario began to play out in my head.

I die (freak tornado, lightning strike, the cause of my demise isn't specific).  John meets me at the gates of Heaven and we hug.

  "Whatcha been doing?" he asks, and I say, "Missing you."

  "No, seriously. What have you been doing?"

  "Being sad." I say.

  His look says, "Good thing I love you, 'cause you're crazy!"

  "Breathing," I add, as if that's any better.   

  Now his look says, "And you can't multi-task?"

It's hard to win an argument with the imaginary specter of your dearly departed. Especially when he's right.

So I made a new deal with myself.  All I had to do was breathe for 10 more years - almost as long as eternity.

And life happened. My kids graduated. Old friends resurfaced. My firstborn got married. I took my kids and grandkids to see the land of my childhood. My youngest moved home. I got to know my cousins and found out they're a pretty wonderful bunch of people. You don't always know that when you grow up overseas, but God bless Facebook, I know it now.  My parents grew older. My parents died. My granddaughters grew up.  Travel, conferences, dinners with friends.

The rewoven fabric of life has deeper hues.

Today, I'm sitting on the same edge of the same bed.  It's been ten years.  I'm still breathing.

And you're here, too.

Thank you.  

Christmas Hands

Here I am again: nearing the end of a year that I never quite seemed to lay hands on, despite my respectful efforts to do so. 

Last Sunday at church, a fellow elder and I were installed to serve on next year's Session (our governing body). This involved, as is our tradition, the pastor and all past or present elders laying hands on us to pray. My church is small, and its people have diligently served for years. So by the time all past and present elders came forward, the pews were empty, except for the children. Then, the children joined the party.

They reached through the tangle of adult bodies, trying to be part of Tradition. There was whispering and jostling and the littlest hands slipped off my arm.  The whispers got louder. Suddenly that pair of little hands shoved their way through with utter determination and GRABBED.  Forget the standard laying on of hands.  This was no gentle touch. No aiming for socially acceptable body parts. This child was determined to be part of the action, and if that meant doggedly squirming through and latching on to any part of me she could, then she was darn well going to do it.

I confess that I missed some of the prayer as I tried to keep a straight face.  I confess that my composure gave way to uncontrolled giggles later, in my car.  And I confess that in the midst of the laughter, a lesson resonated.

It's Christmas Day. This seems like a good time to start following my diminutive friend's example:

Join me - let's all dive in and grab hold of each day with both hands.

(c) Can Stock Photo

The New Normal

A fellow Freecycler called tonight, asking for a better description of the item I had listed. 

“It’s white, sports-style, size medium," I told her. "I bought it for my mother, but she passed away before ever wearing it.” I paused, knowing there would be an appropriate expression of sympathy.

I’m getting used to those expressions. But I’ll confess that in the aftermath of my mother’s illness and death, I find myself slightly adrift. So much of my life until now has been spent responding, in some way, to my mother. 

 
As a teenager, I embarrassed Mom with my choice of music or topic of conversation. She embarrassed me by having my latest ex-crush over for a sympathetic ear and fresh cookies. 

We clashed over her expectations for me and of me. While at boarding school, I knew which topics to avoid in our weekly radio visits. I also knew what I could get away with - like turning up at my parents’ house unannounced with 17 overnight guests in tow. 

This was our brand of normal.

Then, in the summer before my senior year of high school, the world changed. Dad was in Africa on mission business. I was in boarding school. Mom called. Her doctor had just diagnosed her with breast cancer. I left school that same afternoon, travelled the three hours by bus to my parents’ town and spent the weekend caring for my mother. The cancer created a different (but no less complicated), normal. 

Over the decades, we continued to adapt - as families are wont to do. Then just last month, not quite a year after Dad died, Mom passed away. As my siblings and I sorted through her things in Indiana, as I removed the last bits and pieces of her life from the apartment, I noticed an odd vacancy. 

“Normal” had disappeared.

This was uncharted territory. After 53 years of adapting, I was at the top of the pyramid. I was The Grown-Up. This did not feel normal. Despite my theoretical knowledge that this would occur, it was still unexpected.

I mulled this change on my drive home. I was still pondering when I unpacked my bags and found something else unexpected.

It seemed I had accidentally brought home one of the brand-new post-mastectomy bras that I’d bought for Mom when she was in the hospital. It was still in the package. I put it aside and listed it last night on Freecycle.

Ergo, the call from my fellow Freecyler.

Only now, a split second after murmuring her condolences, this stranger on the phone was doing a major double-take. “Size medium?” she asked, confused. “Never before worn?”

Unsure of what the problem was, I answered, “Yes, a size medium, brand-new post-mastectomy bra” - which is about when she started laughing. Between giggles, she explained that she had intended to answer a different post. The one offering a small rack…

The accidental double entendre caught me off guard. I burst out laughing as well. As we giggled on the phone like a pair of teenagers, I was struck by an oddly comforting thought.

I will find my new Normal. And I will never finish growing up. 

 

 

(c">http://www.canstockphoto.com">(c) Can Stock Photo

 

Tribute to my mom (read at her funeral, May 24)

When I was very little, someone sent the missionaries (i.e. my parents) three blankets. One green, one blue, one pink. It was a well-intentioned gift with two problems. A) They were for USA-standard twin-sized beds and we had jungle-standard Dad-made beds that were decidedly narrower. And B) my parents had four children. Not three. 

It was a gift of love that slightly missed the mark. What Mom did with that imperfect gift has stayed with me throughout my life.

She carefully cut off the excess material from each blanket, leaving the original blankets the proper width for my siblings' beds. Then she sewed the three strips together, took a wide ribbon and sewed it over each seam. More ribbon was added around the edge of the tri-color piece and - voilà! A one-of-a-kind blanket just for me. She told me it was special because it had a bit of each of my siblings in it.

It also had a lot of Mom in it. Her resourcefulness, her determination to make things work, her conviction that family mattered: they were stitched into that blanket as firmly as they were sewn into her life.  

I still have that blanket. Faded, falling apart with age, it is a tangible reminder of my mother's gifts in the face of imperfection. 

Today, it is also a reminder of how deeply Mom loved each of her children.

And for my mother's gift of love, I am forever grateful.