The Fear That Shaped My Life
I used to be brave, that was until I was alone some 40 years ago on a flight from Fort Lauderdale to Islip. To this day the only information I ever gathered was there was an indication on the flight control panel that there was trouble with the ailerons and we spent the next two and a half hours preparing for a possible crash. It was with paralyzing fear that I watched preparations begin-babies seat-belted in with flight pillows, drink service suspended everything locked away tight, men were repositioned near the exit doors. There was crying and vomiting and two hours to prepare for what could have been my last moment on earth. There were no cell phones back then, I didn’t have the implements needed to write a note, I had no one’s hand to hold, no ‘I love yous” nothing but silence. The plane was diverted to Kennedy airport - though all of the passenger’s friends and family and parked cars were waiting in Islip. The runways were longer at JFK I suppose-they were better positioned for catastrophe.
We spent some time preparing for a crash-taught and practicing the crash position-head down over crossed wrists leaned against the seat in front of us. As we started our descent the instructions were - if we heard two bells go off in the cabin to assume the crash position. With the city looming below and swimming precariously in a deep blue sky-two bells sounded, everyone was suddenly silent as we leaned forward overcome with fear. Surrounded by emergency vehicles, out on a distant runway, the plane landed without a hitch- to the hollow cheers of everyone on board. A bus was sent out to transport us back to Islip airport where our friends and family and parked cars waited. The only comment I remember was from one of the captains who mustered, “you think you had a bad day?” as he boarded the same bus with all of us who had just faced and lived through our greatest fear.
My mom and a few other family members were still in Islip waiting for me. On the ride home words surfaced slowly as I began to tell of all I had just lived through. They dropped me and my suitcase off at my home where I lived alone and I began to process all that had just happened. I felt so unsettled on my couch, in my house, in the world. I had just straddled the fine line between life and death. After a fitful night of little sleep, I woke the next morning to go to work and went about the day as if nothing ever happened. There was no sick day call for trauma- you take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed and go on. But that day, that hour, that moment has never left me and remains engraved into the very fiber of my being. I imagine that fear is as much a part of our cells as any other element. And it sits there and it lives there and as much as I have tried to release it-it returns like an uninvited ghost and the brave person I once was -was left back there in seat 23B.
Though nearly forty years have passed, it is still with great trepidation that I board a plane. I hold onto the door as I enter and say prayers for survival. I remember my friend Vivian from the ‘Merrymakers’ telling me that statistically I am safer in a plane than in my own bathtub and I try to let that truth sink in-but I’m afraid that that fear has never left me and that very same fear changed the trajectory of my life. Once it settles in your bones it’s hard to shake. Fear is like that- it makes you say ‘no’ when you want to say ‘yes’- it keeps you from people and places and experiences that may have been amazing- and all because of this invisible force called fear.
Some believe in fate and move on-some have unwavering faith that bring them peace-some are so strong that they look fear square in the eye and banish it from their lives -they understand the hold it has-how it keeps you with just your head above the waves while you feverishly tread water to stay afloat. How it reshapes your life to be someone different, someone always poised on the edge of ‘what if?’
I suppose that through this memory my mission is to encourage people to keep on flying, keep on experiencing all you can in this one, as Mary Oliver would say- ‘wild and precious’ life, try not to let fear stop you from that trip with your mom, or the weekend in Palm Springs or that concert in California. To try and take in all you can while you can. As an old friend once told me- “life is short and you’re dead a long time.” Keep on living your best life and if you can, try to relinquish any fear DNA left in your bones. Better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at all”! (Was that from Love Story?) But if every dream you’ve ever had can be lived between your recliner and Main Street than go for that as well. Life’s journey is often taken within.
I have lived through my greatest fear and I am here to tell about it- and yet I am always cautiously planning a new adventure while keeping a little bottle of ‘just in case’ holy water in my backpack.
