Lessons From Sky Buzzin'

Yesterday afternoon, I parked at the end of Runway 1-4 and opened the sunroof.  Even though it's January, the temperature was nearly 55 degrees.  My old yellow dog was curled up in the passenger seat.  I fiddled with the radio until I found something good.  I laid back in my seat and gazed up.  A small plane buzzed by and I watched it descend and land with a slight skip. I turned my eyes towards the circling skies just above and smiled. 

* * * 

My father was endlessly fascinated with aviation and always itched for the open skies.  At our house, on a clear night, you could see the alternating green and white directional light from the local airport flashing over the treetops in our backyard.  He talked about learning to fly often and my mother encouraged him to go take lessons.  When I was six, he finally got his private pilot's license - one of his proudest moments.

Within a few months, once he built up his confidence and experience, he started taking me up.  He said he needed a co-pilot.  He flew a modified Cessna 172: it was white with gray and blue stripes and lettering.  The call numbers on the tail contained "zero nine three echo" - I remember this because of the way we had to call into the tower when we were in motion.  The inside was snug and made of a sand-colored canvas and cloth.  I was small so I couldn't see over the instrument panel in front of me, leaving me to strain to see out of my small side window.  I remember twisting against the seatbelts every time in an effort to widen my view.

Every single time, my father performed an impeccably responsible and thorough pre-flight check and balance. My father, under normal circumstances was a bit of a silly, gregarious man, but as a pilot, he was intensely focused and serious. He taught me how to check the fuel, which quickly became my favorite thing to do.  I was not incredibly mechanically inclined, but crawling up under that wing and using the sample tool made me feel competent and important.  He told me to make sure the fuel was clear and without any odd coloring or particles and so I would hold the vial up to the sun, checking it from every angle like a chemist working on an important discovery.  I walked around the body of the plane, sliding my hands along the metal sides and bumpy rivets.  If I saw any ding or scratch, I was sure to call out to him so he could give it a good double-check. 

Flying is part math and part poetry.  In the air, he explained to me what each single instrument did: altitude, air speed, attitude, directional indicator, and on and on.  I was always annoyed by the calculations but quickly realized that, despite my overall disdain for math, it was the numbers and equations and rules that were keeping us aloft and thereby keeping us alive.  I learned to appreciate math, albeit temporarily.  The poetry comes when you look out the window and see the world below look as differently as it ever has before.  I especially loved the flights over the ocean.  There was something magical about watching the brown and green earth below me dissolve into a blue hue... and looking out to see the blue sky and the blue ocean terminating in a thin, perfect line.  As we flew along the coast, I could make out the familiar landmarks: the inlet, Trimper's Amusement park, the boardwalk, the fishing pier, and the assortment of big hotels.  His fascination became my own: it's a wondrous and thrilling perspective.  And it makes you see everything with reborn eyes.

Once, he took my sister and I on a night flight over the ocean.  When the lights of the beach town faded behind us, the black abyss stretched out like the universe.  As he tipped the wings into the darkness, my belly dropped and it simply delighted me. My sister had trouble with the air pressure on her ears and spent the entire trip laying in my lap in the backseat of the plane.  But I was enamored with it.  I stared out and up... I always wanted to be an astronaut. I mean, how daring and adventurous it would be to leave the planet and be weightless among the stars! What could that feel like?  Would your belly ever stop flip-flopping?  Wouldn't your brain be permanently drenched in adrenaline?  It seemed like a glorious, wild ride!  But once I learned that my nemesis and its sidekick - math and science - were required in copious amounts, I left that preoccupation behind. But, I had these moments... sky buzzin' (as he called it) with my father and that was close enough for me.

And so, in those early years of my life, I learned to turn my eyes up.  I watched planes.  Wide open skies.  Circling above.  I even made up a game of choosing destinations for the planes I saw in the sky.  Try it: the next time you find yourself outside... on the beach, in a park, in your front yard, watching a meteor shower... just kick back, look up, and wait. When you see a plane cross overhead, imagine where it's going and always go with your first instinct. (Oddly, a lot of my planes are headed for Miami, Florida or Bangor, Maine.)

If we couldn’t go up, then he would take me to the airport anyway. Inside the small building at Bayland Aviation, there was an old Coke vending machine in the back where only the pilots could go and he’d buy us a couple of Cherry Cokes or Mello Yellows and we ride out to the end of Runway 5 and sit.  There was a particular spot, right off Fooks Road, where the fields and forests gave way to an expanse of asphalt.  He’d kill the engine and we’d listen for that familiar mechanical hum overhead.  In those moments, he’d ramble on about the workings of a Dash-8 or the differences between this jet and that one or about how a plane from Easton crashed at this airport  on the night before he did his first solo. I gazed out the windows and let my imagination run: who were the passengers?  Where had they been?  More importantly, where were they going?  I made up little stories about business men coming in to sell alarm systems or medical equipment or an old lady headed to North Carolina to visit her sister one last time.  The pilot  who was going to propose to his lovely girlfriend as soon as he got back from this trip.  The blonde flight attendant who dreamed of being an actress on a soap opera.  My mind ran on and on.  So, I never minded the quiet or the chatter, the mechanical hum or the buzz of the insects in the field grasses around us.  And in those moments, I appreciated the ability to sit still. Listen. Daydream. 

No matter how old I get, I always find comfort at the airport or at the end of a runway. I remember those old days with my father. I remember learning to embrace new horizons and perspectives, to appreciate the things I understood easily and the things I could not, to listen and let my mind wander a bit.  I remember that I learned to not be afraid.  

And those are lessons I should remember a little more often...