It begins an hour before I need to be at the airport. There is time to lay in bed and drape myself in a light blanket and let the edges of my body sink. My cheek presses the air out of pillow stuffing as I notice my weight.
I feel large and heavy in the gravity pull of my bones. I imagine my body in the sky and roll onto my stomach to feel the pressure of the bed on my stomach. The pilled fibers of my orange blanket are in my face. A white piece of string is stuck to the blanket and several flakes of cardboard from a cat scratch box are on there too. I am packed but I really need to get up and dress.
I could decide in this moment to miss my flight. It’s an option. It’s always an option I am aware of. It would disappoint my family, but that would be it.
I heard once that terror is awe out of focus. I am focusing on the blonde hairs on my forearm and the ingrown hairs. Sun spots. My tattoo ink is fading at the edges.
Commercial airplanes cruise at an altitude of 33,000 to 42,000 feet.
What is it about flying? Why not fear of driving?
When I’m flying I am forced to think about God.
I read once that the body of God is not “out there.” It’s here- brushing up against the hairs above your lips. There is no where you can move that you will be apart from it.
I notice air touching the skin on my forehead because the air conditioning is blasting us. I am in my aisle seat. The man next to me doesn’t want to talk, and neither do I.
The airplane is taxiing to the runway, and it is now I wonder if this is the last sane moment of my life.
Have you ever seen terror up close?
On the airplane, there is no future. There is Now. This is always the case, but I rarely live this way. I start to imagine SeaTac airport, my destination. I think about the healthy food place at the food court where I could sit and watch people hurry by while I wait for my ride home. I think about this and then the airplane drops in a pocket of air, I shut my eyes and cup my hands, reality is of falling, falling 33,000 feet in the air.
No one taught me how to pray. How do you pray on an airplane? I silently ask for more time. Please not this airplane, this time. But why not this time? Why does anything fail, collapse, kill, or crush us at all?
At the root of fear there is a simple question; why would it not be us? The ones that boarded a night plane as a means to get to Seattle in 50 minutes instead of 8 and a half hours. There have been others equally deserving of arriving at their destination and they did not.
My seatmate and I watch as the wings tilt and we bank so that our window is the floor of Missoula. We can see the Clark Fork flooding with brown water.
