Wheels Down
APRIL 21st - One of the last Spirit flights, but we didn’t know it back then
We’re flying north. I look outside the window, I’m seating right above the right wing. I see some lights below us, all blurry. On the other side of the plane, in between the seats and heads and shoulders there are some glimpses of a dying purple sunset, and the lighter blue immediately above it.
The land is blurry because I took off my glasses to wear my sleeping mask and try to get a bit of the rest my body desperately needs. It was in vain. When I go days without getting proper sleep, throwing my body from a place to another and my soul along with it - tossing them around like marbles in a shoe box violently shaken - my legs forget how to relax. There stays a subtle consistent current, I can’t really let go of the muscles. The very chatty kid sitting behind me that keeps kicking and hitting my seat every time I close my eyes doesn’t help.
The sleeping mask really is a game changer, although it’s up against too much right now. It’s soft and thick, it feels like memory foam. Like some of the items I cherish, this one was something that came to me, I wouldn’t have bought it for myself. Someone left it in the Hamptons house we rented for my thirtieth birthday, now almost a year ago. I was doing the rounds all over the house right before check out to make sure everyone got all their belongings, that the bed had been stripped, that everything looked okay. I asked all of my friends who were at the house if the mask was theirs, but no one ever claimed. It really helped me sleep on many flights in the last year, which isn’t something I usually excel in.
There are two men in their early forties two rows behind me that have not stopped talking since they sat down. I know they are strangers, or at least they were before this flight, given how they speak to each other: yes, my kids are five and two, yes, I got laid off last year. Recapping their lives to each other. One of them has the aforementioned two year old kid wrapped around his neck like a plush monkey. I heard the monkey-sporting man tell a story about a recent activity he did with his wife.
“I’m not really afraid of heights, but I kept thinking that I was killing myself.”
“My cortex kept telling me: you’re killing yourself. Then my frontal lobe kicked in and told me - hey no, you’re fine, you just need to have faith in your equipment”.
I don’t know which activity he’s talking about, but it’s funny to think that my brain does that same exact thing every time I’m on a flight.
The battle between fear and technological faith sometimes starts days before the flight, with sudden and short flares like a sporadic lightning in the night sky, miles away. It is usually a full fledged battle by the time I’m in a car driving to the airport. It doesn’t take up all of my mental space, it’s more like the participants of a medieval fair faking battle in the background while in the foreground a tv reporter focuses on the logistics of the trip.
She presses on her ear piece and holds her microphone steady in her hands. Behind, faceless men of two sides lock wooden swords made dull by the many fake battles they took part in.
“Yes. Yes John I hear you”
“Yeah. It looks like she got her passport - what’s that? - has she texted the dog sitter the screenshot of Wolf’s very detailed routine? Hold on..”
She stops and looks out of frame, as if waiting for a cue.
“Yeah. Yep, just now John, just now. Yes, the dog sitter confirmed”
“She’s right on schedule and she did leave the keys in the lockbox. It seems like crisis might be averted one more time John. Back to you at the studio”.
Sometimes I manage to quiet down the two sides. Last time I did it on my flight to Italy. It was a trip I looked forward to, and an exercise of free will. It felt like drinking fresh spring water after a run. Not that I’ve ever tried it. But I was going home after freedom-less, brutally cold months where I couldn’t travel, forced to stay in the holy land of freedom. Then, finally, I was going to see my family and I was traveling with my dog for the first time. I had tiny little company by my feet and twenty delicious days ahead of me. The fear side was largely shushed by the love side and the battle never even really begun.
This time is different. Wolfie is in my apartment, probably perched on the blue couch staring at the door after the sitter left. I’m exhausted and I’ve fed my body a lot more alcohol and cigarettes than I should have in the last few days, and a lot less food than I should have. My job is becoming an increasingly important source of stress. And, above all, the place I’m flying to is empty of love. Yes, of course, my friends are there and I’ll rejoice in their hugs in the next few days. But the person to whom I talked the most for the last two years, with whom I shared the most in the last two years, isn’t there anymore. Well, technically he is there. The same way a light bulb is there once it’s gone out.
I won’t text him when I land and I won’t fall asleep in his arms after my ride from the airport. It’s me only, and the bunch of strangers the plane will vomit in the jet bridge and into the tiny terminal A of LaGuardia. This, and my body’s condition, don’t help the battle. Technological faith is powerless without love to look forward to.
In the light of the lack of romantic love at my destination I just try to kill time until it’s finally wheels down. Reading this, writing that.
As a sweet, yet uncertain promise, comes the flight attendants announcement, the one I always look forward to and the timing of which I’ve become very good at predicting.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve started our descent towards LaGuardia.”
The temperature on the ground is colder than I’d like it to be, and most definitely colder than Florida. But I’m getting closer to home. Even if the light bulb might be burned, the home is waiting for me. My bed is waiting for me, and my life - of course, provided that we don’t crash and burn during landing, which is in fact one of the two most dangerous parts of a flight - my life is down there, flickering like the lights streaming along below me. Just the space of these few liminal minutes left until I’m back into it, like slipping into a pair of comfortable sweats at the end of a long day wearing standing pants, the ones that make your butt look great but cut through your crotch.
The plane descends smoothly, just a few bumps I’m very familiar with, not enough to actually scare me. And just like that, it’s wheels down. The mysterious backlit signs along the runway pass us fast at first, and then increasingly lazily. People start clapping. When did we agree that clapping at landing was back in fashion? I thought it was forever deemed tacky and ignorant, kind of like clapping in between concert pieces. But this one, I can get behind. Yeah, faceless men in the cockpit (funny name, ain’t it?) always blessed with deep, reassuring voices, thank you for bringing me back into my life in one piece instead of a headline. You deserve the applause.
In loving memory of Spirit - a glorious, ironically human, down-to-earth company that made many otherwise inaccessible trips possible.
And the humans who made it all work.