I’ll never forget the first time I took off with Kevin in our Cessna 172. It was a hot June day and he had just gotten his private pilot’s license. For his birthday, he thought it would be fun to pile our whole family into the plane (5 of us in a 4 seater) and fly to Electric City.
I stepped into the front passenger seat and placed my headset on. I fumbled with the buckle and made sure my shoulder strap was cinched as tight as humanly possible, while the kids shared two seatbelts between the three of them in the back seat. Apparently, this is fine since we were still under the weight limit of the plane.
Kevin looked over at me to make sure I was ready, and in between tears and short breaths that signaled an impending panic attack, I said “Just go!!!” I knew that if I tarried, I would bail. It wasn’t the first time in my life that I just had to press through and do something scary.
As he taxied and did a run-up, I reflected on what a nice life we have had, and thought of how if we went down, at least we would all go down together. I’m such an optimist.
After taking off, not hitting a bird, not experiencing an engine failure that would necessitate an emergency landing, we slowly made our way over the Palisades giving way to miles and miles of wheatfields that carpet the rolling hills on the route to Banks Lake and Lake Roosevelt. I started to enjoy the view while focusing on my breathing. I tried to stave off nausea that was building due to the hot weather creating instability in the air which resulted in enough little bumps and pitches that I think if I’d had some cream in a jar on board, I would have been holding butter by the time we finally landed.
The landing was spectacular. We circled over dark blue water pocked by rocky outcroppings and cliffs. We came in for our final approach over Banks Lake, circling the edges where the blue turned to green, and then, my hands gripped my seat once again as I saw the runway in sight.
The two most dangerous parts of any flight are the landing and the takeoff. I knew this because I had been obsessively reading crash reports over the previous months, digging for statistics on whether flying in a small private aircraft is in fact, more or less dangerous than driving in a car. (FYI, no one really knows because it’s like comparing apples to oranges based on things like the number of hours traveled, etc). So at this point, my faith is in my husband’s type A obsession with proper maintenance and his personality that lends itself toward caution rather than sending it at all costs.
We touched down on that glorious strip of blacktop, and I was utterly shocked to still be alive.
Suddenly, we were away from home, next to a lake, and the whole thing had taken just 40 minutes. This benefit slowly started to chip away at my intense fear of flying in small airplanes. The opportunity! The ability to be transported so quickly and easily for a family adventure seemed to be a mark in favor of this crazy new way of travel.
We quickly found the courtesy car and drove to Safeway because there was no way I was doing that flight again without some Dramamine. It turns out I wasn’t the only one. Nick and I are the ones in our family most prone to motion sickness, and he was also looking a little green.
After arriving back at the airport, we went into the single-wide trailer set up as the “Pilot’s Lounge” (since becoming a member of the GA community, I’ve found that we fit in quite well since the cultural vibe often echoes the one we are most familiar with: High-Tech Redneck), and we put some cash in a coffee can to pay for ice cream bars out of the freezer.
We walked down to the lake and the kids waded out into the water as we took in the view and enjoyed this new element of adventure in our lives.
Soon we headed back home, and I didn’t cry when we took off. I was still pleasantly surprised to be alive when we landed back in Wenatchee, and this was a sentiment that would arise for at least the first 10 flights I took with Kevin.
As I’ve thought about my earlier fear of flying in small airplanes, it’s occurred to me that most things are scary until they become routine. It would be such a bummer if I had put my foot down and just refused to assimilate to this new way of getting around with our family (we have a bigger plane now, so no more double buckling which makes my mom heart breathe a big sigh of relief).
I think there are a lot of things in life that we miss out on because they feel too scary.
I also think it’s possible to take a risk and have it end in tragedy. To this day, I don’t completely push that out of my mind, but I’d rather live in a way that embraces and pushes through healthy fear because so often the most beautiful and exhilarating things are on the other side of that fear.