Grab it by the tail

Photo by James Cridland

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
-- Katherine Paterson.

I wish I could tell you how it happened but the reality is that sometimes, we don't understand how things come upon us until time has sorted the sequence out. All I can say is that one day, the fright just seemed to be there, comfortably lodged in the area of my ribcage, secretly wrapping itself around my heart. I haven't been able to get rid of it since.

The first time I noticed, I was seated somewhere in the middle of a huge Airbus, stuffed with luggage and passengers coming back from Paris to the US. It was nighttime outside the windows but time was rewinding itself as we flew over the Atlantic in our crumpable metal cigar. To the left and right of me there sat a sea of elderly nuns dressed in habits. They had been attending a Christian symposium in Europe, revisiting the grounds of their faith and no doubt having found something still fertile and growing there because, I remember how unusually chirpy and chatty they seemed when I most longed for some rest.

Even at this age I was a pro at flying well, not so much in the luggage department, that would take another decade to pare itself down to those essentials on which someone like me, could survive on the contents of her carry-on alone, should the plane ever crash-land. No, I meant that I was an expert at handling myself at foreign airports and dealing with hotels and taxi drivers, cognizant of the little tricks that can hinder or expedite travel because by this time, I had already flown much and gone places.

I was dozing when the lights came on, the captain's voice rousing me from semi-sleep. We would be passing through some turbulence, could everyone please fasten their seatbelts? My seatbelt was already fastened - thank you very much. Unless getting up to stretch or to attend to private matters, I always tightened that uncomfortable strap no matter what because, I had once read about a Japanese airplane that had encountered freak turbulence. In the incident, one of the unbuckled passengers had flown straight out of his seat, hit the ceiling and unfortunately broken his neck. The moral of that story: buckle the seat belt. And so I did.

The jarring movements started quickly enough after the captain's announcement but I kept my eyes firmly shut and attempted to recover my doze. This went on for a few minutes and though I could feel the plane had accelerated and climbed higher in order to shake off the currents that plagued its stability, rather than have those maneuvers help, we seemed to have been caught in something worse. That was the first time I ever felt a spasm of pure fear while in the air. The first time I ever made crash contact with the knowledge that there was a long way to fall inside a little metal container with nothing but endless ocean beneath.

Gradually the conversations died down. All of us could feel that there was a difference this time. A few seats down my line a nun plucked out her rosary and began to pray. Many other nuns followed suit. Their low-key murmurings were no serious competition to my silent moaning or to the creakings of the plane. After what seemed like forever, we heard another message from the captain, everyone was to please remain calm, with their seat belts still buckled (as if anyone would have thought to get up at this point), hopefully we would be through the worst of it soon, he said.

I really don't know how long it lasted but the minutes shook and grunted by like a freight train set on an unstoppable collision course. In that everlasting interim, several of the overhead compartments popped open and belongings flew out. People yelled in fright. From the ceiling of the plane, a few of the oxygen masks dropped down, jostled out of their storage by the extreme movement and many on the plane took it as a sign that we were somehow doomed. Through it all, I felt the nuns and everyone else praying. I found my own religion on that trip. The fervent litany of my wordless Oh Gods bringing me closer to a state of spiritual trance the likes of which, I have felt only once again in trying to give birth my son.

Afterward, while the stewardesses went about righting the cabin and checking to make sure that the passengers were outwardly OK, I was told that there had been some people who had gotten sick and little children who had cried while alarmed parents had held them as tight as they could to their sides. On deplaning I caught snippets of conversations from the other passengers - how horrible, said one lady to another, I know, I've never gone through anything like that in my life... I daresay it could turn me off of flying again... Vraiment effrayant (truly frightening) said one French stewardess to the other right before they pasted twin smiles of practiced happiness and delivered their goodbyes.

I walked out of that airplane with something more than just my carry-on and tattered nerves that day. Something that has settled deep within me with the passage of years. It took me a long time to understand that my initial discomfort with air turbulence has grown into an unchecked terror that threatens the peace of those around me and raises concerns in my impressionable child.

I really thought that I could handle this fear myself. I thought I could handle it when I commuted every weekend for a whole year from DC to Houston, and I've thought I could handle it whenever I've been on a plane that has experienced something other than a mild shake. Three weeks ago however, on a flight back from Washington, I found myself hyperventilating and holding on to my son's hand with the grip of death. I could tell from his frightened little face that he knew something awful was happening to me and it was scaring him terribly.

Trying to get some control, I resorted to my most trustworthy distraction - my husband's trick of transposing the letters in the names of states but, you will laugh, I knew I'd finally reached my limit when Alabama was no longer Abalama but a stuck course of ay! mama! and the tears leaked unchecked from my eyes. R's visible worry got through to me in the end. I could tell that I needed to somehow reassure him immediately and that gave me the strength to pretend that I was OK. It helped that the flight became steady again but deep down I knew that it no longer matters that I think my fear of turbulence is ridiculous. Because however ridiculous, it it is real to me and I cannot handle it on my own. I've tried, but I can't.

This is the first of my New Year's resolutions. To seek professional help in overcoming my fear of turbulence and halt it before it becomes a fear of flying altogether. I cannot allow that to happen. In this day and age, flying is like taking a taxi for my family. We fly out of Houston a minimum of 5 times a year if not more and I cannot tarnish my son's experience with airplanes through my own negligence in seeking help. I'll do whatever it takes to get a handle on it so that it may release its handle on me. I hope I may someday overcome it. Wish me luck and no turbulence in my upcoming trips at least and let me know if you, like me, have developed a fear of something you had once not feared at all.
__________

During the last few days, I've been wishing to catch up with many of you but having family in the house has occupied most of my free time. Now that my father has left (he went back to Panama this morning) and R starts school again tomorrow, I will have time to do my blog rounds and see how you guys have been doing. Of my family, only my mother remains with me here now. She will rejoin my dad in Panama after nearly 6 months of being in the US helping my sister with her newborn child. Houston is her last stop before she goes home and I mean to enjoy these last two weeks of her company, because it will be three months before I get to see her again. Until then, please forgive the absences. Thank you again for all your kind well-wishes for 2009. I return them ten-fold.

Milena