29 May 2006

Reluctant Devotional

Damn you, airplane.

I wish you hadn’t pulled that contrail over my four year-old head as I sat in the grass on that warm spring morning.

I wish you hadn’t flown low over the apple orchard in my parent’s back yard, your Cub-yellow skin reflecting in the sun, and your engine making that lovely, Continental pop-pop-pop sound.

I wish you and the other F-100 hadn’t screamed up Initial at that airshow when I was six. You broke hard to downwind, landed, and parked directly in front of me as I looked up at my Mom’s face to gauge whether the unbelievable howl of your J-57 engine was something I should be scared of. She held her ears, but without much concern. I saw no need to cover mine. Your sound was an utter tonic.

I wish you hadn’t allowed me to grease the landing on my first solo.

I wish you hadn’t help me find the lift so easily along the ridge at Harris Hill, allowing me to stay aloft for over three glorious hours with no engine and less than 20 hours of experience.

I wish you weren’t such a perfectly photogenic beauty, your wet, sensuous frame looking so perfect in the early morning sunlight that I could not help but touch, despite the sign that said Do Not Touch.

I wish you hadn’t growled at me so throatily on the grass at Duxford as you came to life, twelve hundred vintage horsepower at my command.

I wish you hadn’t been such a satisfying challenge as you taught me how to fly faster than sound, curve upward through ten-thousand foot loops, and fly formation only 36 inches from your brothers.

I wish you hadn’t protected me so valiantly when the enemy wanted me dead.

I wish you hadn’t been such a mighty and impressive weapon, mated with such perfect control harmony.

I wish you hadn’t flown hands-off on your first test flight.

I wish you hadn’t allowed me to see the world from eight miles up and more, the sky darkening and luring me even further upward.

I wish you hadn’t blasted my face with that smell of oil and fresh-cut hay, your upper and lower wings framing a perfect sunset as we touched down in a perfect three-point attitude and the blades of grass swishing gently under your tires.

I wish you didn’t cause a lump to form in my throat every single time you fly a missing man formation.

* * * * *

I wish these things not because I wish you ill. I wish these things because my life might have been easier without you. I might have become a computer programmer, a technical writer, a highly-paid consultant, or someone else less subject to the whims of chance, nature and Big Business. I might have had a stable, predictable, easy-to-explain career, with no great attachment between what I do for a living and what I do for recreation. I might not have been so emotional about life and love.

Instead, I am wedded to you and everything relating you. Very few of my many friends are not “airplane people.” I often note with alarm that most of the artwork in my home is aviation-related. My bookshelves are full of aviation titles. I have to work hard to keep aviation jargon out of my conversations with non-aviators. You have interfered in more than one of my romances.

My thoughts are wired to the sky. When I dream, the backdrop of my mind’s wandering is often vast space and sunlight. I drive my car as if I’m flying on instruments: Precise, watchful, and trying to be smooth even when there’s no one else along for the ride. It's almost pathetic.

Like a parent or spouse, I hurt for you when things take a bad turn in your industry, and I cheer your successes and glorious moments.

Though I complain today about your overriding influence on my life and all its components, I am not willing to change my level of commitment. I tried once. The experiment was a dismal failure. I knew I wasn’t being true to the things I love. So I quickly returned, humbled at the human soul’s inability to deny its true calling, regardless of good intentions.


Damn you, airplane. You have me for life.