One thing I hate...

I do not like flying.

And it far outweighs my ‘Staying at Home Alone’ hatred. About 5 years ago, not so long after September 11th, I was on a flight to Dallas that encountered some "problems". I was asleep in the front row and it was a pretty empty flight so there was no one else in my row. I woke up with the damn air masks hitting me in the face and there were people screaming. And it felt like we were falling. You know how they tell you that the little bag that's attached to the masks might not inflate but there will still be oxygen coming through? Totally true. I forgot this fact in the confusion of the moment. If you ever find yourself having to use one of those things, it's a good thing to remember...keeps you from panicking even more. Turns out we had somehow lost all cabin pressure and they had to make a "quick controlled descent" from flying altitude (35,000 ft?) to 5,000 feet in order to remedy this. We flew for the next hour at this lower altitude and then made a priority landing in Dallas. If I hadn't HAD to get on a plane to get home, I doubt I ever would have again. And I didn't like flying before this.

However, as my parents insist on not living in the same town as me and want to see their grandson on a regular basis I have to suck it up and deal with the flying. We have been down in sunny Arizona visiting with my parents at my Grandmother's house. It was a fantastic trip - the weather was unseasonably warm, Will and I were able to spend really wonderful time with my parents and my grandmother. We even got to see my Aunt and Uncle and some cousins I haven't seen in over 5 years. I miss my parents a lot and so it was really good to be able to see them again so soon after Christmas - even if it was just for a few days.

So I was really, really happy. And I was also traveling without Dan. Sometime even just one of these things can trigger my anxiety of flying because 1) Sometimes it frightens me that by being so blissfully happy I am somehow tempting the fates and the universe will course-correct and cause something tragic to occur and 2) I am often terrified that something bad will happen to some subset of our family and what that would mean for the person who had to deal with tragedy. Totally rational, no? With both of these factors in play, well, needless to say I was out of sorts yesterday when heading to the airport. While we were driving I was internally working on my long standing resolve to not let this affect me around Will, because I don't want him to feel the depth of my irrational fears.

But then, it seemed like all of these little things went wrong. Stupid things like us getting lost trying to find the terminal, and then the skycap not being open meaning I had to stand in a long line to check my luggage, and then the bag holding Will's car-seat wasn't working right and then and then...for some reason all of these little things stirred in with the base of anxiety that was barely being contained underneath the surface caused me to become slightly unhinged. I started crying in the middle of the airport with my mother standing next to me holding my two year old child. At 30 years old I had to have my mother walk me through the airport to the security line because somehow my coping skills had reverted to those of a six-year old.

I reassured her that I was fine (I don't think she believed me) and made my way to the front of the security line with Will blowing kisses to his Nana the entire way. Then to top it all off there was a problem with my driver's license and both Will and I had to be searched. Which was awesome. But hey, the guy that took every single thing out of every single bag I had knew how to get Will's car-seat bag to work correctly, so score!

By the time we finally got on the plane I was done. Even at two hours past his bedtime Will was officially more together than his crazy mama. It was a reasonably empty flight and it was just Will and I in our row. He was asleep before we left the ground, and I? I don't sleep on planes anymore because I have to keep the plane in the air by sheer force of will...and if I sleep who is going to do that? A little while after take-off, in the dark with my little boy sleeping next to me, I finally had some release - not in a good Zen kind of way but a silent-crying panic attack kind of way. I can only imagine what the flight attendant who caught my eye when I was done must have thought about my situation. Not that I really cared though...I was just glad that I had managed to keep it together long enough for Will to be asleep. Plus, I had to focus my attention back to keeping the plane in the air.

Yeah, I don't like flying.