I think I missed the lesson from my dad — who hated flying — regarding airplane window seats.
We found some joy in the original Star Trek series and loved the idea of spacefaring. The worlds seemed more unified despite their distance. No up and down prevailed.
However, I realized (maybe before he stopped running around the house, maybe after) that he didn’t really want to go up. There wasn’t a world where he wanted to really see the stars, to work to find a way up. He wanted to have the stars comfortably placed at his feet.
We kind of disagreed about this, I think.
I am my father’s child in some ways. In the moments the flight descend or shake, I think “dad never messed with these metal birds for a reason.” It’s a basic thought grounded in experience, despite every stat or study provided. It is an inescapable consequence of upbringing — I hadn’t really flown regularly until long after his departure, long after my bachelors came in the mail, well into and beyond day one of the COVID-19 pandemic’s firmest grasp on our collective lives. Yet it remained.
I also sometimes pull toward flights of fancy beyond my means. Sometimes, when I’m deeply convinced that my dad’s hope for instantaneous comfort was always out of reach, I too rush toward an endless sky. I escape into the impossible above a sky of my own.
However, as I sit on flights to and from, things change. The man born before Brown v. Board, who lived a life just before the first presidency of Donald Trump, would definitely be thrown by my desire to travel in the way I have; living the life I have will strike minor chords.
Dad wouldn’t dare look down across lit ground nor face the pull of forces trying to keep him on the ground. Meanwhile, I and the seniors in choir wrote songs to the contrary — that we “succeed and believe no one can keep [us] on the ground” — fiending for flights of fancy beyond. By that time, my most positive thoughts were that sickness and malaise pried dad’s desire to attend from his love for his kids. It is generous and keeps dad’s memory sparkling in the mind, protecting him and shielding me from the darkest narratives available.
I say this because I flew, as many in my family have, in spite of my upbringing and past. All the existing family experiences that stood to maintain a fear of what I hadn’t experienced — the whirring of jet engines, rattling cabins, disconcerting bumps — were replaced by beautiful morning skies, lovely chats with cabin crews, masked smiles from across the aisles, and beautifully lit night landscapes.
If I’d let the world’s most uncomfortable and scary stories overdetermine my life and success, I wouldn’t have memories I’d always hoped for. I’d be without photos from oceans surrounding the East and West coasts. My mind would hold no memories or experiences of note in the state of Texas. The District of Columbia may be a space I see limited aesthetic beauty in. Illinois would be a space I called “far away” rather than a space I lovingly returned to year after year.
It’s a space of privilege, for sure. But in the moments when a father’s whispers carry untold blessings and protective warnings, these acts of insubordination feel mildly sacred. I become glad that, in death and life, I simply do what a less experienced or knowledgeable parent warned me not to. Where one group of parents may caution, perhaps I follow another parental figure into sacred peace on board silent nighttime flights. Perhaps I ascend, ever so slightly.
Away, away from the noise. Alone with you. A way, a way to hear your voice. To be with you. Nothing else matters.
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