FLOTSAM AND JETSAM: FLYING

In 1963 you could fly the Boston to Newark shuttle for $25 with your student discount. That's when I discovered air travel. I'd fly home from Boston University on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break. I loved flying. It seemed the perfect way to deal with living in two worlds. It made the culture shock of going back home less difficult.

When in the air, in that transition from one emotional and psychological space as well as geographical place, my mind expands. It is easier to think. I feel like an anthropologist, observing my own life from a neutral distance.

I flew frequently during my college years without a single mishap. You couldn't say the same about my early experiences behind the wheel. It's one of the reasons I don't drive to the airport. I've written about that pretty extensively in my other blog, Six Generations of First Born Women.

Early in my relationship with RG we flew back to Wyoming for his 20th high school reunion. That was something for this city kid who feels uncomfortable unless there is concrete beneath her feet. We flew from Boston to Denver and then took a bus to Rock Springs, met his mom who drove us on to Cody where the reunion was to be held. But this is another story.

In 1984 RG took Erika and me on the flight of our lives. We flew from Boston to Zurich then on to Vienna. We were headed for a little town on the Hungarian border called Zurndorf and a place called Friedrichshof. This is also another story, too big for telling now.

I made many flights back and forth to Europe in my odyssey to find and live somewhere that I truely belonged. Although I found it, it was not to last forever, so there were other flights that brough me back to where I started.

On September 12th, 2001 I was booked on a flight out of Boston to Sarasota Florida to visit my folks. Needless to say that was one flight that did not make it off the ground, but in all my years of flying, it's the first flight I'd had canceled.

My current job demands that I sometimes fly to exotic places. In the past 6 months there were flights to Taiwan and in March I had to be in Tartu, Estonia and Paris in the same week. This gave me plenty of time to write and fodder to write about.

Now I fly Boston-Montreal every few weeks. To me it's almost like taking a cab. My first grandaugter was born there in February 2002. I almost made it to the hospital in time. It was not the fault of the Air Canada flight that I just missed the birth, it was the idiot cab driver on the ground who could not find the hospital. My second, Mei Lee was born there a year ago on May 5. Yet another reason to hop on that plane.

So, I still love flying. It's provided a thread, with markers that makes it easier to view my life, and I am grateful that it's just 45 minutes in the air between Boston and Montreal.