In Flight

I leaned my head against the cold window, wishing I could fly back to Colorado and crawl back into bed with Albert. Happiness was a good man to come home to even if he was a dog.

My boarding call sounded. I walked to the gate, handed the gate attendant my boarding pass and ID. She smiled and said I was the last to board. I boarded, found my seat, settled in, and began reading the novel I picked up in an airport gift shop.

After takeoff, I couldn’t read any longer. I stared out the tiny window, watching the Great Lakes recede. I was always sad while in flight. Those hours spent suspended above the earth are the worst and loneliest hours: waiting to leave one place to arrive in another. Some small slice of misery served on a platter of transportation.

The last time I’d made this flight was for my mother’s last days. She’d remained stoic all the way until the end, smiling through the pain as cancer ate away at her flesh, and grasping her favorite Bible. In her presence I mirrored her strength, alone I was reduced to childish displays of despair. My mom had been an unfailing example of a strong woman. Sometimes I took her advice too much to heart, I tried too hard to distance myself from emotion only to be overcome with it.

The flight lasted only an hour, but it must have been one of the most excruciating hours of my life. I dreaded even landing in Iowa. It was almost as if I would be swallowed whole once my foot hit the tarmac; the soil of my home state would devour its lost daughter. It almost felt like I’d betrayed the state by running away, but how does one betray a state. This wasn’t Texas now was it?