flying history

Katie is trying to learn how to take selfies!
Katie is trying to learn how to take selfies!

My mother and her parents loved to travel but were afraid of flying. During my childhood we never flew anywhere so I didn’t notice this and it somehow never came up in conversation. It didn’t even occur to me when I was 15 and my father was offered a job in Greece and my parents decided to move us there. We traveled across the mighty Atlantic Ocean on a cruise ship, the TSS Olympia, from New York to Athens, with a stop in Haifa, Israel.

My first flight on a jet, from Athens back to New York, was memorable. It was just me and my sister, nervous and holding hands for most of the trip, on my 17th birthday, on a 747, shortly after the Greek army had deposed Col. Papadopoulos in a bloodless coup. Our parents were to follow us a couple of weeks later. The perimeter of the airport was surrounded by tanks, reminding us of the fear we felt at dawn weeks earlier, when we awakened to the sound of tanks rolling down our street and military music playing on loudspeakers.

We loved getting pictures of Katie and her parents while we were away on our trip!
It won’t be long
before she masters the technique!

We were in the middle of a row on the plane and did not get to look out the windows. There was a stop in Rome, but we didn’t have to get off. However, when we landed there my ears started to hurt, a sharp, stabbing pain. The pain subsided a bit as we flew on to New York, but returned with a vengeance when we landed there. I didn’t fly again for 34 years!

My mother made a dear friend in Greece, a Canadian woman named Carol who was married to a German man, Ernst. Mom overcame her fear well enough to fly to Lebanon with Carol & Ernst and my father, and to visit Carol & Ernst when they moved to Germany, and to Ukraine with my father and his sisters to visit the land where his parents were born.

My grandparents remained fearful of flying. When they came to visit us in Greece, to economize, they sailed on a freighter that accepted a few passengers! It was a rough and tumble passage, and I loved listening to their stories about their adventures on board. Grandmother died without ever having flown, in spite of her son’s repeated efforts and offers to take her up into the sky. He was a pilot, after all.

When Grandfather was 90-something my uncle persuaded him to fly from Cape Cod to Florida to spend the winter down there with him. Tim & I met Grandfather and his physical therapist at the airport to see him off. The captain was the son of the physical therapist, who had kindly arranged everything, and he came out personally to welcome my grandfather and then pushed his wheelchair onto the plane himself as we waved goodbye. Right then and there I decided that if Grandfather could face his fear so late in his life, I could do so as well.

"Daddy, where's my menu?"
“Daddy, where’s my menu?”

Grandfather’s physical therapist also had made him a sandwich and put it in a zip-lock plastic bag. When my uncle called me that night he told me that when he asked Grandfather what he thought about the flight, Grandfather went on and on about the zip-lock bag. He had never seen one before and was marveling at the technological genius of its design! Never did say much about the flight itself!

Finally, my opportunity to try flying again came along when I was 51. Larisa, Tim and I flew down to Florida to visit his stepdad, who was dying of cancer. Much to my surprise, I loved it! Being a dreamer without much aptitude for logic, science and technology, I found myself in awe of the human minds who had figured out how to fly and it still seems like nothing short of a miracle to me every time we take off or land.

And the curve of the world passed
With all of that flying
Above the mighty ocean
Now we all are arriving

Grab the carry-on baggage
Join the herd for the mad run
Take a place in the long line
Where does everyone come from?

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve flown in the seven years since, sometimes even by myself, to Florida, Georgia and North Carolina to visit family. It’s still a thrill! So last month Tim & I boarded a Delta 737 in New York and flew to Frankfurt, Germany, our once-in-a-lifetime trip to visit his brother and sister-in-law and to visit Venice and Norway with them. Seven international flights in a month!

It was dark for the flight over, and uneventful. But I had a window seat and a flight tracker so when we caught up with the light over Europe I got to see all the fields and forests in Germany as we began our descent. Some fields were bright yellow – I later learned these were growing rapeseed. After we landed it took us less than a minute to go through customs.

As we shuffle on forward
As we wait for inspection
Don’t be holding that line up
At the end lies redemption

Now I’m stamped and I waved through
I take up my position
At the mouth of the canyon
Saying prayers of contrition

A few days later we took a cheap flight on a budget airline, Ryanair, to Venice. It was cloudy so I couldn’t see anything, and it was definitely a no-frills, sardine-in-a-can experience. On the trip back to Germany three days later, however, the sky was clear and we flew over the Alps, much to my delight! It was amazing looking down on those snow-capped peaks.

Please deliver my suitcase
From all mischief and peril
Now the sight of it circling
Is a hymn to the faithful

Forgive me my staring
For my unconcealed envy
In the hall of arrivals
Where the great river empties

A few days after that trip we flew from Frankfurt to Oslo on Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). Even the inside of the plane had that Scandinavian feel, light and airy, you could even see through under the seats. After a magical week in Norway, we flew from Bergen to Stockholm, and on that flight, out of the blue, I got such a sharp stabbing pain in my nose, cheek and temple that tears were squirting out of my eye. At first I thought it was a sudden migraine, but I suspect there was something off with the air pressure. It brought back the memory of the ear pain flying home from Greece all those years ago.

We changed planes in Stockholm and then flew back to Frankfurt after having the best Swedish meatballs ever, right there in the airport restaurant. And unfortunately the pain came back on that flight, too.

Its hand carts and quarters
All the people it carries
To be greeted with flowers
Grandfathers and babies

The friends and relations
Leaping over hemispheres
Transcendental reunion
All borders vanish here

A little over a week later I took a 12-hour Sudafed before boarding the Delta flight from Frankfurt to New York, just in case. Not sure if it was needed but there was no pain on the return flight home. I love Delta because it has a flight tracker at each seat. I was able to identify the English Channel, Great Britain, the Irish Sea, Ireland, and stateside, my beloved Cape Cod, as we flew over. We also flew over Nova Scotia (thinking of Sybil then) but I couldn’t see the land there because of the clouds.

Too bad customs was overwhelmed when we arrived after having such a great flight. It took us almost two hours to get through the maze of lines and scanners and official agent desks! I’m glad my sister and brother-in-law did not give up waiting for us to appear through the arrivals door!

We are travelers traveling
We are gypsies together
We’re philosophers gathering
We are business or pleasure

We are going or coming
We’re just finding our way
To the next destination
And from night into day

~ Mary Chapin Carpenter
♫ (Transcendental Reunion) ♫

It’s good to be home. We continued to receive pictures of Katie in our email almost every day while we were gone. Thank you, Larisa! I have thousands of pictures to go through and many posts to write about this trip which I will get to, even if it takes me all summer. We went to the nursery to get flowers for the balcony and nasturtiums for  Zoë to nibble on. We ate at our favorite restaurant and went down to the beach. Tim went to the eye surgeon yesterday and we found out that he will definitely have to have cataract surgery for both eyes in July. At the same time the surgeon will fix his astigmatism so he may not need glasses for the first time in his 62 years! That will be something else indeed… Life returns to normal…

13 thoughts on “flying history”

  1. Hi Barbara,
    Sounds like a trip of a lifetime! I’m looking forward to reading more posts and seeing the pictures. So interesting how just stepping aboard an airplane tells so much about its country.

    1. Hi Rosie! I bet you’ve been on all kinds of airplanes since you’ve traveled so much of this world. The sense of spaciousness on the SAS flights was a welcome change from feeling squished and smothered on the Ryanair flights.

  2. Thanks for taking us along on your vast and marvelous journey! My parents won’t fly – how I wish they would; if only for a few shiny days in Vegas! Father has only flown once – since I’ve known him – and that was for work, going to Sarajevo for the 1984 Winter Olympics.

    1. You’re welcome, Aubrey! Being in Sarajevo for the 1984 Winter Olympics sounds like another once-in-a-lifetime experience! My father loved to fly and he wanted to be a pilot in the US Army Air Forces during WWII. But, because he was the only surviving son of his parents the government wouldn’t allow him to fly and he had to work as a mechanic on plane maintenance, theoretically safe on the ground.

  3. Dear Barbara,

    I read your blog very slowly, taking time for each word, imagining what you have described, the place, food, flights, Alps, people, beauty, pain. I must thank you very much for writing this for us. You know, I visited Germany in the month of March, I loved the country so much that I still have teary eyes when I remember the experience of it. I did try to blog about it but never could I express what I really truly feel. Germany! I’m so glad that it exists. Europe is a wonderful continent. I’m sure you also liked Norway as much. Flying by the European Skies, oh wow!!
    Katie looks very cute. Blessings to you all!!

    Love,
    Sonali

    1. It was so sweet of you, Sonali, to take your time reading my lengthy history of flying experiences – I was afraid the post might be too long! I’m hoping someday when my granddaughters are older they might find reading about their grandparents’ grand adventure interesting, too.

      I can understand how you fell in love with Germany, how any of us might fall in love with one place or another. Germany impressed me with its many wind turbines and solar panels – I think my brother-in-law said they get 60% of their energy from renewable sources. They are quite serious about recycling, too – I had to think carefully about which can to place which kind of garbage in. It’s a very beautiful country.

  4. It is a beautiful country indeed. So much to learn from there. All beautiful and sensible things. I also like this song lyrics that you have put in, It resonates with me. How nicely composed. I’m still dreaming!

    1. Sensible, yes! I got the feeling that the German people were very practical and organized, also very friendly and helpful. They’re into organic foods and alternative medicine, too. I hope you get to visit there again soon, Sonali!

  5. It all sounds so wonderful, Barbara! Even the flights, which is surprising for me to say because I have a great fear of flying. I love the way you think of flying as miraculous. I think such thoughts, that feeling of awe, must overcome any fear. 🙂

    1. My head is still spinning from all the excitement, Robin! I think that there are a lot of us who are or who have been so terrified of flying. Now, if only I could find a way to think of dangling spiders as miraculous. 🙂

  6. I waved when you flew over but I worried you wouldn’t see me coz of the clouds. 😉

    I used to be afraid of flying but love the view and that view now outweighs (most) of my fears. Do you think you have an inner ear problem btw ? Have you had it checked ?

    I had cataract surgery a few years back. Tell your beloved not to worry. They give you the BEST drugs. I can’t wait for my second eye to “go” so I can have those marvvy drugs again. lol

    1. Well, it’s nice to know you were waving, Sybil, even if we couldn’t see each other. 🙂 I’m with you, concentrating on the view keeps my mind off imagining what could go wrong while I’m up there. Definitely have sinus problems – allergies to so many things – I practically live on Benadryl. Tend to avoid decongestants, though, as they raise my blood pressure. Everyone I know who has had cataract surgery tells us the procedure is a breeze and all the worry is for nothing. (I’m secretly glad Tim’s going first!)

  7. 🙂 wonderful to see and read your blog again….the selfies have definitely come along a treat Barbara…for me I’ve never flown, neither of our parents have ever been on a plane either…maybe one day we will. My son Tom, who has lived in Denmark for the last 5 yrs regularly flies, he’s not keen on the journey as it takes him most of the day… he needs to take bus, air and plane to commute between countries

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