Re-Routes

Earlier this week found me flying to a distant city in the morning for a short meeting and then flying home in the late afternoon.   The distance was only a two-hour flight each way on one of the smaller regional jets that don’t have enough space for a regular sized carry-on in the overhead and the configuration of one seat on one side and two on the other.

I’m not a great flyer.  Over the last thirty years, I’ve flown all over the world and always arrived safely.  However, common sense tells me that there is an unrealistic expectation to think that this tube of sorts I’m sitting in should actually be able to get off the ground, fly thousands of miles, and then gently land to drop me in another time zone, weather zone, and even at times, language zone. 

I question the logic every time I step into that world of other travelers, flight attendants, and pilots on speakers telling me what the weather is like at our destination of arrival.  When the internal questions begin to turn me into a Nervous Nellie, I try to apply the logic of something I heard recently “you can pray or you can worry, you can’t do both”.  For me, prayer is a better option (and more calming) and an effort to relax and deciding that the pilot is flying the plane, not me, helps with the meditations.

Despite that the afternoon flight left a few minutes early, my view from the window seat of 9C was still over the Gulf of Mexico at the same time my watch said we should be landing.  Not long after that an announcement came over the speaker that told me that weather in Houston had had us in a holding pattern. Problem was that we were now low on fuel and Houston was not accepting any traffic.  We were headed to Louisiana to weather the weather and re-fuel.  Hopefully another attempt could be made in a few hours and “we’d all be home soon”.

Eventually we were back in the air and the view was again the Gulf of Mexico and darkness was setting in.  Another holding pattern.  I searched for landmarks that I recognized on the coastline that were really too far away to see anything except community clusters of lights here and there.

There is a sense of a loss of control in that moment.  A “Twilight Zone” kind of story line that starts running through your thoughts.  How long are you stuck in this holding pattern watching the sky turn to night and no option to stop, leave, and take another direction?

My life has not had many re-routes that I can point to and say “that was the moment it all turned around”.  The industry I’ve made my daily living in for years is filled with people/caregivers and patients that easily point to that moment when everything changed for them.  A diagnosis of a terminal disease or the battle to keep it from being so would change the direction of anyone’s life.  Hairpin turns is what I think of when I imagine the conversation that takes place in that moment.

There weren’t many holding patterns either. The decisions that were made regarding school, work, loves, and life were as methodical and safe as I could make them without being limiting.  No hairpin turns, no moments of wild abandon, no re-routes to the totally unknown.  One step in front of the other in the direction I had determined is the best way to describe it.  Was it too limiting?  Has it been too safe?

When I felt the plane bank a turn north and saw the coastline start to come more into focus, my shoulders relaxed.  The holding pattern had been methodical and safe and was taking me to my next destination.  No big surprises.  No totally unknown—at least for now.