God has been hearing a great deal from me lately. My husband, you see, has taken up flying. Not only has he taken up flying, but he expects me, who has read all the accident statistics, to go up there with him.
Now, I want you to know that I have nobody to blame for this turn of events but myself. A couple of years ago, Jonathan and I were having the conversation I imagine most middle-aged couples have—especially when they decide to draw up a will.
“So, Sweetheart,” I said, “is there anything on your “things-I-want-to-do-before-I-die” list that you haven’t gotten around to doing as yet?”
There was. My husband wanted to pilot a plane. Okay. Next Christmas, he dug a gift certificate for three flying lessons out of his stocking. He was tickled silly.
Three lessons, however, were not enough. Jonathan revealed that he had a new goal: he wanted to earn his wings. I have to tell you, I wasn’t prepared for that announcement.
Just ten months ago, with the ink still wet on his pilot’s license, we joined 26 other pilots flying to the southern end of the Baja Peninsula to whale-watch. Since then, we’ve eaten fish tacos in San Felipe, buffalo burgers on Catalina, and the best darn garlic fries I’ve ever tasted in San Francisco. If you are catching on to a theme here, namely, the appeal of culinary delights—make no mistake—my husband knows exactly how to entice me on these trips.
But after the first few months, these flying sojourns simply took too much out of me. You see, the problem was I actually believed it was my responsibility to keep our little plane in the air, all by myself, through sheer willpower alone.
So, totally exhausted by now—I turned to prayer. After a few conversations with the Man Upstairs, slowly but surely, I started to relax those clenched white knuckles. In fact, I got so stress-free and peaceful that I was eventually able to peer out of the window--instead of staring at the confusion of dials I couldn’t interpret anyway.
And there it was—the might and majesty of creation--in all its breathtaking diversity—thousands of feet below the wing of our Cessna.
“So this is what God sees,” I thought to myself.
My husband, who I also suspect prays more these days, was smart enough to put me to work. That decision really helped. My overactive imagination stopped conjuring up all sorts of paralyzing sudden death scenarios, and at the present, I’m learning to read charts, to program the navigation system, and to handle the preflight checklist.
At some point, I’ll also be taking a special course for those who occupy “the right seat.” The class is supposed to prepare the passenger to take over, should anything untoward happen to the pilot.
A couple of weeks ago, Jon and I found ourselves in an astonishingly beautiful place called Lake Powell. While waiting for a boat to whisk us west to enjoy a spectacular Arizona sunset, Jon wandered over to the corner where the guys in his flying club were talking technical. I joined the wives who had managed to ensconce themselves on the most comfortable of the hotel lobby furniture.
Since I was the new girl in town, the first thing they wanted to know was how long my husband had been flying. “Well,” I paused, “he got his license in December.” They all looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and made sympathetic murmuring sounds.
“So what did you think of that turbulence on the way in from Sedona?” piped up the oldest. She didn’t actually wink but she might as well have. Since signing up for this particular excursion was a last minute decision on our part, Jonathan and I got stuck with the smallest, slowest, and most turbulence-prone aircraft in the entire rental fleet.
You have to understand that pilots have this macho thing going on when it comes to being bucked around by the wind. They get around the loss of control by employing a convoluted grading scale. If the shaking loosens the fillings in your teeth but no rivets pop out of the plane, the turbulence is considered “light.” If you have been lifted out of your seat or objects fly through the cabin—the turbulence is “moderate.” As to “severe” turbulence, you don’t even want to know about that.
On the way in over the mountains, we were hit by wind gusts so powerful that I actually conked my head on the ceiling—despite being buckled into a highly restrictive seat belt-harness contraption. And then as if that weren’t terrifying enough, the window thermometer lost its moorings, careened around the cockpit, and crashed at my feet.
So the correct answer to the woman’s question, if I didn’t want my husband to lose face, was “Turbulence? It was only “moderate.”
Look, honey,” she told me, “don’t be afraid to admit you were scared. We ALL are.” In fact, she pointed out, some pilots’ wives are so petrified that they just plain refuse to ever go on in a plane.
Who can blame them? Remember, they have lived with these guys for decades. They know no matter how many hours Hubby has racked up in an airplane, at home, he still can’t keep track of his car keys, can’t hit the hamper with his dirty underwear, and is totally incapable of replacing the roll on the toilet paper dispenser.
So how do these women cope as they accompany their husbands into the wild blue yonder?
Several made no bones about pounding down tranquilizers—in fact, there was an animated discussion about the effectiveness of various anxiety-reducing pharmaceuticals. One swore by Niquil—she took a healthy dose before buckling up—that way, she was able to sleep peacefully through most of the flight. Still another made a clean breast of the fact that it took a couple of belts under her belt to get her into the cockpit with her husband—even though he had been flying for 31 years.
But that still leaves one unanswered question. Just WHAT was this group of smart, affluent, and well-traveled ladies so afraid of?
Although his name was never spoken, there was no doubt about the identity of the elephant in this living room.
We watched him grow from a winsome toddler in short pants, pulling his starfish fingers into an adorable salute at his father’s funeral, to the super-confident publisher of a trendy political magazine.
We nursed the hope that he might, one day, actually step into his charismatic father’s shoes. But John F. Kennedy, Jr. was heir to the family legacy as well as its so-called curse.
The tabloids were constantly brimming with titillating exposes of his drug use, his fiery temper, and his weakness for superstar companions. How do you respond when “People” magazine dubs you “the sexiest man alive?”
For many Americans, however, the last vestiges of Camelot came crashing down on July 16, 1999.
On that date, Kennedy’s single-engine Piper Saratoga, bound for a family wedding, took off at dusk from a quiet New Jersey airport. Two passengers—his wife, who was 33, and her sister, 34, were also on board.
He, suffering from the sniffles and with his ankle in a cast, was edgy and short-tempered. His high-strung spouse, who demanded that her manicurist keep reapplying nail polish until it matched the exact color of her new outfit, didn’t arrive at the airport until daylight had faded and the sky was thick with haze.
Despite the self-assurance that comes with the Kennedy name, John’s lack of flying experience put him at a distinct disadvantage. In addition, although he lacked the five miles visibility that visual flight rules require at night, he took off anyway.
Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board now believe he became critically disoriented in the inky gloom. Without knowing it, his plane slipped into a downward spiral, and he eventually crashed into the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.
Instead of believing what his instruments had been telling him, his ego convinced him to trust senses muddled by cold pills.
With respect to five separate decisions, Kennedy turned out to be dead wrong. And he took his wife and sister-in-law with him.
“Hubris” is defined as “the excessive pride or arrogance that leads to one’s downfall.” John, Jr. should have realized that at no time should any pilot expect to sleepwalk through the task of flying an airplane, and, more importantly, a change in the weather can transform blue skies into a life and death-testing nightmare. In a New York minute. Even if you are an American icon.
So in response to previous question, “what was this group of smart, affluent, and well-traveled ladies so afraid of?”—they were afraid of having to share a cockpit with hubris.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis suffered countless sleepless nights. A recurring premonition convinced her that her only son would perish in a plane crash. To that end, she pleaded with her longtime companion, to do whatever it took to keep John Jr from getting his pilot’s license. Obviously, John Jr. won that contest.
But I suspect Jackie was no different than most women who find themselves the mothers of pilots.
Take my mother-in-law, Lillian. If she had had her way—her son, now 56 years old, would never have been allowed to cross the street—much less pilot a Cessna.
But I understand her—in fact, I understand her very well. She and my own mother, who passed away in 1993, were so similar, they could have been twins. Both were bright, beautiful, and maternal to the max. Both were offspring of immigrants from Lithuania. Both were daughters of men who eventually succumbed to alcoholism. Both abandoned their plans for college, without a word of protest, to provide for their families during the Great Depression. And both struggled with fear.
Whenever Jon’s mother is faced with a situation that is anxiety-provoking in any way, she will invariably respond with four little words--“to hell with it.” In fact, now in her Golden years, those words have become her life’s mantra.
“Did you go out for your walk today?” “Naaaaaa, too windy—I just said “to hell with it.”
“Did you ask your doctor about that new medication?” “He was in such a rush—you know doctors, I just thought “to hell with it.”
“How would you like to go out to dinner with us tonight? “Such money they want in restaurants “to hell with it--“nehmo gerousa” (Lithuanian for “home is best.”).
Sure, home is best when your daughter-in-law does the cooking. These days, big meals are no longer prepared at Lillian’s house, her son picks out and picks up his own clothes, and after an accident at K-Mart, where the 81- year old was employed until 2002, Lillian’s universe keeps getting smaller and smaller. In fact, life has become pretty much “nehmo gerousa” these days.
Perhaps hearing “to hell with it” every day prodded Jonathan is the opposite direction. He seems eager to try everything—no matter how unlikely the outcome or how costly the process. It might interest you to know that my husband, just like 90% of all pilots, suffers from a debilitating fear of heights. Now that’s something to think about.
What really worries me, however, is that Jon has started to chafe under the burden of becoming his mother’s entire world. Although, he tries to be the good little boy she fondly remembers—the kid who seemed perfectly content to play quietly at her side—sometimes her “to hell with it” credo gets to be too much.
Sometimes, Jonathan just has to fly away.
Wouldn’t it be something if she would agree to go up in a plane with him—just once—to experience that special world that he loves so much?
You know, maybe that’s something else I should just pray about.