When It Feels Like the Plane Might Go Down

Late last night I was flying home from Fort Worth. There’s a certain feel to a plane in those late-night hours, when most people are sleeping, when a few overhead reading lights shine down, when the plane is humming along at whatever ungodly speed planes fly. People talk in a whisper, if they talk at all. A baby cries, then quiets. Through the window I watch the lights of some distant city pass beneath us, as if we are no longer in a plane but on the shoulder of a giant taking strides across a continent.

By the time we approached our destination, I couldn’t see anything through the window except for a thick soup of clouds that reflected the plane’s lights. The wings flexed up and down, and the plane shuddered, began to dance back and forth, bumping. We hit one of those updrafts that presses you into your seat, then immediately dropped, enough of a plunge that everyone in the plane let out a nervous, “Whoa . . .”

The girl beside me closed her eyes and got a firm grip on the armrest. She breathed audibly through her mouth, a long attempt at calm. Then the plane dropped again, and to this the disturbed passengers gave out less of a “whoa” and more of something verging on a muffled scream.

I clenched my jaw. Breathe in your nose, out your mouth. Easy does it. Nowhere else you can be but right here, in this moment.

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It turns out mid-November was a wonderful time to be in Fort Worth. The mornings were chilly, the mid-day sun warm. A client and I went for a long walk one evening along the river outside of the city, passed by joggers and bike-riders and dog-walkers. We talked about our childhoods, our work. After it got dark, runners padded past us on the path, their flashlights and headlamps bobbing up and down.

I spent the evenings in a hotel, writing. The days in an office, mostly, brain-storming and working and dreaming. It was a good trip.

My friend there is my age, lost his wife to cancer about four years ago. We talked about her passing, how hard the last months were, what it’s like being single again at middle age after being married for 25 years. There’s a courage that comes with beginning again. There’s a steady, solemn determination that’s required in those moments after the plane drops.

I left with this tangible awareness of how short life is. I was reminded why Maile and I bought the bookstore, why we’ve done a lot of the other things we’ve done during our 25 years together—these days are passing us by, and there’s no use standing on the sidelines trying to preserve all the little things we’ve gathered. Someday soon we’ll be gone.

What, then, will have been the point of hoarding anything? Of taking the safe route? Of doing anything other than those things that lift up others, create relationships and community, and leave the world a better place than we found it?

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This Saturday marks five years since our dear friends lost their son Parker. I will remember that morning for as long as I live, getting the call from my cousin, showing up at our friends’ house desperately hoping it was somehow not true, some sick joke or tragic mistake. And then my friend answer the door and I realized it was true.

I can hardly believe it’s been five years—in some ways I’ve marked Parker’s passing as I watch our son Cade grow up, because they were about the same age. Cade is 21 now. I thought of Parker when Cade graduated, when he left for college. I think of him now all the time, as the five-year mark approaches.

What will do as we remember those who have gone before us? How will we live in the face of so many losses, past and future? It can feel paralyzing at times, the sadness in the world. But there’s also so much beauty.

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The plane dropped and shook and rumbled its way through the clouds and fog, all the way down to the runway, where it skidded along the tarmac and eventually slowed, drove through the rain, and came to a stop at our gate. The relief was palpable. People chuckled at the fear they had felt only minutes before.

It was after midnight by the time I pulled into our little driveway, in front of our little blue house. The leaves were slick, orange and red and yellow, and the dim porch light was on. I let myself into the quiet house, put my things away, and went over to peek down the stairs. Our dog Winnie looked up at me from the basement, debating as to whether or not she had the energy to come and greet me. If I was worth the effort. Eventually she did.

“Hey, girl,” I said. “Thanks for waiting up.”

I climb the stairs, the hallway light on. At the end of it I can see Leo and Poppy sleeping on the floor in their room. Always sleeping on the floor. You can buy kids a bed and a mattress and pillows and it seems all they want to do is build blanket forts and sleep on the carpet.

I changed my clothes and climbed into bed. Maile rolled over, woke up enough to ask me in a sleepy voice if I had heard the storm. I said I guess I had flown straight through it.

We clung to each other the way you see people embrace on a sailboat when the waves are rising around them, or like the plaster molds they made of the people who lived in Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted.

What else can we do but cling to one another? Somehow find hope in the future? Live our lives for others, as we fly through the storm?