On Flying
If you are not already, someday you will be older. Someday you’ll feel old. Or you'll find yourself sitting next to your child, the one you birthed from a teenage womb, on an airplane at take off and you'll notice his right leg shaking rhythmically and you'll wonder if he is scared and you'll wonder how you've flown so many times with him and still don't know if take off makes him scared and he won't kick the seat or ask a million questions or want two snacks or need the bathroom as soon as his seat buckles. He'll just put his Beats on and his head down and watch The Hangover, which you'll watch too and giggle, over his shoulder, at the same time as he snickers and he'll be so grown up you won't know if you should ask him if he's scared and it'll be too late to ask him if he's scared and hopefully he isn't scared.
I tap him once on the shoulder, lightly, and he hits the screen of his phone with his index finger, deftly pausing the film while raising the headphone from his right ear with the opposite index finger, questioning? "They have a monkey," I point to the movie, referencing, without reference, the conversation last week where he attempted to persuade me towards a monkey as a pet. "I know," and his face breaks into a smile.
"Do you want your air turned down; are you cold?" I ask in one sentence, noticing his still shaking knee and excusing the movement as circumstantial. "I'm good," he shrugs and puts his headphones back on, answering both questions.
The young man on the other side of the aisle hasn't stopped shaking, a balled plastic bag in his fist and a hoodie pulled around his face. I cannot tell if he's tweaking or withdrawing or hungover or motion sick but he's been to the bathroom three or four or just one time but every time I look over he's shaking or gone. I wonder if his mother ever sat beside him on a plane and asked if he was cold but meant, "it's ok to be afraid," and I wonder if someone will wonder about my son, someday, when I no longer fly alongside him. And I wonder if my son will ever tweak or withdraw and if he does if someone will offer him a smile, or a shoulder, or the aisle seat when he's wretching or frightened. When he’s leaving a place that’s toxic or just trying to get home.
Was it always this way, windows closed on a night-setting airplane flight? Or did we start shutting them tight on take-off when we lost a sense of wonder?
Sometimes I am not sure that I want to be a mother. I think this as we de-board the plane, him swinging heavy backpack across strong shoulders. I think this as I admonish him, for the third time or the thirteenth time or maybe the first time today to just, pleeeease, be kind to his brothers. And I think this as I notice his long tan legs and his too short shorts and his red and cratered jawline. "When do I go to the dermatologist," he asks and I tell him the date, twelve days in the future, and he rolls his eyes as if I have made the physician's calendar, set his school hours, chosen his classes, inhibited his success. I am not sure that I want to be responsible for his happiness, the slope of his shoulders, the constant reminder to stand up straight, "posture matters," his argument that, "maybe humans are meant to evolve to a chin down, sloped shoulder, future stance."
The little girl behind me sings the words from Lion King's “Hakuna Matata," and her dad, alone alongside her, tattooed and seemingly overwhelmed, answers her every few minutes as she declares, "Daddy I love you so much," in a sing-song voice with his own, tired response, "I love you so much, too." And, of course, she kicks the seat and asks a million questions and wants two snacks and needed the bathroom as soon as her seat buckled. And I think he may be exhausted or maybe didn't know he wanted to be a father or found his identity disrupted or is widowed or alone or maybe I'm drawing all of these conclusive imaginary lives from the tone of his tired voice or the intricacies of his tattoo sleeve and none of this from my own.
We land. Jolting. He tells his daughter, "we are going to have to wait a bit while everyone gets off the plane. We are at the back of the plane." Like he needs to convince her to convince himself that this is how it will be but it will still be. That they will survive the flight. That the withdrawal will pass. That the fear will subside. That we eventually stop kicking our feet and settle in and settle down.
"If you keep recording your song on your tablet, you won't have any storage space left."
"Okay"
Pause
"Daddy what’s storage space mean?"
He tries to tell her that the device storage will fill. And for ten minutes she says, “but there’s a spot here,” and points to an empty icon space on her screen. Swipes to the left. “But there’s a spot here.” We are always looking for ways to record what is fleeting. To hold in clenched fist, even as our body wretches and shakes to expel. To let go. How do we expect a child to unpack the intangible?
I wake up early to unpack and start the laundry. A chilly October day before 5:30am, I look for warmth. A flannel is laying across the arms of a dining chair, discarded as he walked into the house last night. "This can get passed down," he said, as he finished copying his biology homework from a fast disappearing Snapchat screen. The little Cheat. “It's a little tight in the shoulders."
I recognize it as a shirt his father wore when he was a younger man. I'm wearing a shirt my son has passed down to me. We are all outgrowing what is old and reliving experiences others have had. Withdrawal. Survival. How do we expect ourselves to unpack that which cannot be seen?
