“That moment, lift off, when flying is real, has never lost its magic for me.”

I have a love/hate affair with air travel. I love going places, hate giving up all measure of control to a machine I don’t understand, and a pilot I have not personally vetted. Wheels up is a profound moment for me, terra firma disappearing as I’m lifted into the vastness of the sky. Of course, I do know that each and every day I live unaware of what destiny has planned for me, but the illusion, when I am on the ground, that I have some measure of control gives me a comfort that I do not have at 35,000 feet.

Given this propensity for fear in flight, it is interesting that I do not cry in the moments when I am bounced around at altitude. That kind of thing can make me grab onto the hand of my seat mate, who thank god, more often than not is someone I know, but….not always!

I cry, quietly, when I am leaving someone behind I will miss, like my children, my siblings, my dear friends. I cry when leaving an old life and starting anew (I have done this more than a few times). I cry when I have foolishly chosen to watch a movie like “Terms of Endearment”, or decided to listen to Josh Groban on my noise cancelling headphones. (Noise cancelling headphones being the very best invention for those with vivid imaginations who might think any given sound, usual or unusual, might be the beginning of…well you know!)

There is something about the moment of taking off that has always captured my attention, completely. Growing up in a family replete with children, my father used to herd us into the wood-sided, Country Squire station wagon, snacks in hand, our destination just off the road at the end of the runway at Newark (not yet International) Airport. And there, full of excitement and delight, we emerged from the car, sat on the bumper and the hood and, for what seemed like hours, watched the landings and take offs just over our heads. Our only wish, that our mother could have joined us. Of course, now we know, those “outings” gave her one brief shining moment of alone time.

That moment, lift off, when flying is real, has never lost its magic for me. In that moment, as the ground disappears beneath me, I understand the words of John Magee Jr: “I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings”

That said, I cry. There are times tears are the closest, most real, expression of the events that have led to boarding a flight. The time I was called home from far away to bury my mother. I had cried on the outbound of that journey, climbing into the sky, knowing I might never see her alive again. The flight across the country to be at my brother’s side as he lay dying, crying hard, unleashed, bitter tears, as we descended through each decade of altitude, closer to earth, not wanting to land, to walk the hard ground of his leaving.

Other times, on long hauls, when all of the eating and drinking and reading and back and forth of flight attendants has settled and, all buttoned up for the hours of travel ahead, darkness on the outside is matched by darkness on the inside It is almost surreal, the drone of the big engines sliding inside of my skin, like bass notes in a steady rhythm. In those moments, all that has become mundane about air travel falls away and I am acutely aware that I. am. Flying. I’m far above home ground, and on clear nights, in the distance, I can sometimes see that we are cheating the night and chasing the dawn. Far below people I will never meet are sleeping, loving, grieving, living and dying and I am but one tiny speck over eternities of water, ice, barrenness. And I tear up with the sheer wonder of it all.

There is a profound aloneness that envelops me in those moments and in that solitude my life, all of it, comes into sharp focus, and I feel it, the ups and downs, the gains and losses, the hopes and dreams, but mostly it is those whom I love, and have loved and lost, that wrap their essence around me in the silence and I let the tears flow freely, tears of gratitude and wonder and hope.