My son’s question made me anxious. He had called on my birthday and asked if I’d like to go up with him in a small single-engine plane that he usually flew on practice flights out of Nashua, New Hampshire. He said, “Ask Mom if she wants to go too.” When I did so, she shook her head and said something about not being able to handle it. Maybe she’d come along and take photos of us taking off.
The trouble was I’d just turned eighty-two and had many stupid anxieties remaining from a traumatic childhood. Going up in the air in a small plane with an inexperienced pilot who’d only had his pilot’s license for a few months jumped to the top of the list. I hemmed and hawed on the phone, suggesting to Jesse that it might be better to wait for warmer weather. He said the cockpit would be warm enough and that he was going up anyway unless the weather turned bad.
I sensed he was offering this flight as an exciting birthday present and that turning it down would disappoint him. I took a deep breath and said maybe it would be something I could write about. “Yeah, Dad,” he said. “A new adventure to write about.”
When Jesse was eight-years-old, I’d written he was anxious about fire and wind. When the wind blew in the giant pine tree outside his window, he had trouble falling asleep. He often called for one of us. As I sat on his bed one night, he asked me if I was afraid of the wind. “No,” I said. “In fact, when I was a kid, I used to sleep on the screen porch during summer storms. The wind in that pine tree didn’t bother me much. I just buried my head underneath the covers.” He asked if I was afraid of anything. “Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid of people with guns and truck drivers who drive on my tail.” He said I could always let the trucks go by. “I could,” I said. “You know, I’m also afraid to die.” I’d been Jesse’s age when my parents argued during a scenic autumn drive, causing my father to accelerate our old Pontiac to ninety with the intent to “kill us all.” Over the years his drunken tirades included physical abuse to my mother and threats to “kill the kids.”
“I’m not afraid to die,” Jesse said. “There will be so many people I know in heaven when I get there.”
“That’s true,” I said, “but we’ll have to make the trip alone, and that’s a little scary...like if we sent you alone on the plane to Indiana to visit Grandma and Grandpa.”
“I wouldn’t be afraid then,” he said, “because the airline would have flight attendants to watch me the whole way.”
I was now anxious about flying in a small plane. I hoped God had flight attendants.
It was a chilly afternoon on March 4th when my wife and I drove into the parking lot of the East Coast Aero Club in Nashua, New Hampshire. The sun was bright, not a cloud. Jesse stood there, motioning us into a tight parking space.
Out on the tarmac sat a dinky white plane with the wings mounted over the cockpit. I didn’t know how many flight school students had flown this plane, but it appeared to have seen plenty of action. While Jesse did all the plane’s preflight checks, Shelley took a photo of the plane and me with my arms spread out in a crucifixion pose.
Soon Jesse had me buckled into the cockpit, briefing me on levers I would need to pull if we were about to crash. When he started the engine, I said, “I’ve changed my mind.” He said, “You don’t have to go.” I said I was just kidding, although my inner voice was saying false bravery was the same thing as stupidity.
Over my headphones I could hear Jesse communicating with an air traffic controller as we taxied to the top of the runway. Once airborne, he flew us over Manchester to Portsmouth and then up the coast to Portland, Maine. He did a landing there (for practice, I guess) even though wind was buffeting the plane. We sat on the runway for about five minutes, took off again, and began retracing our flight path back to Nashua. The sky was so clear we could see faraway places like Mt. Washington, Lake Winnipesaukee, Sebago Lake, Boston, and even Mt. Monadnock. Whenever Jesse spoke to air traffic controllers along the way, he sounded confident and authentic. By the time we landed back in Nashua and saw Shelley waving to us from the tarmac, I was feeling immense pride in a son who had flown us for two hours like a seasoned professional.
After Jesse tied down the plane and called for it to be refueled, we ended the day with more family hugs and photographs. As Shelley drove us home, I thought how fortunate I’d been to overcome the anxiety that might have prevented me from having this unique adventure with my son. I was so grateful now.
Years ago, for his eleventh birthday, I had arranged a local flight in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk from a small airport in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Jesse sat beside the pilot; Grandpa Ned, who’d flown in B-17s in WWII, sat with me behind them. The pilot flew to our town and dipped low over our house. As we returned to the airfield, the pilot let Jesse take the controls. I was not anxious then, perhaps because I failed to realize that someday Jesse would really hold the controls and fly his own airplane.
If I live to be ninety, maybe he can take me up again. Perhaps by then I’ll have forgotten the childhood trauma and be less afraid to die. At least my Boston Globe article about the youthful origins of his passion for flying will be recorded for posterity.