The plane I traveled out West on was a genuine 21st century bird. A full mid-morning flight, we were packed in tightly, bodies beside bodies beside bodies, with only a few inches to spare. A guard stood at the gate alerting anyone with oversize luggage that it’d have to be checked at the last minute; with so much baggage, so much stuff, I wondered if the plane would be able to lift up into the air at all.
On the sterile ramp I stand and wait for the children in front of me to step onto the plane. The little girl, decked out in gold curls and jelly shoes, trails a mini Hello Kitty rolling suitcase behind her. Crouched at the plane’s door, I tap the metal body, rapping my knuckles three times against its skin. “Remember to make friends with the plane,” my Stepmother had told me the night before, sensing my pre-flight jitters. “I always do,” I responded with mock enthusiasm. In truth I never would have forgotten something so important; I’d already performed the flying rituals my OCD mandated three times that morning, bizarre concoctions of repeated phrases and tongue clicks and prayers sent up to a God that, in better times, I swear never even exists.
Inside the cabin, the lights glow a cool purple. I have the distinct feeling that I have just stepped into a hip nightclub instead of an aircraft. People busily attempt to squeeze into their seats. A baby close to the front squirms uncomfortably, letting out a soft wail. My mother and I take our two seats near the wings, a middle and a window space, next to a woman reading a New York tour guide book in Japanese. I find this peculiar since we are leaving New York, not entering it. Perhaps she is reminiscing about the memorable vacation of which this flight to San Francisco is the culmination. I sit next to her for six hours, and never think to ask.
At takeoff, I squeeze my mother’s hand so hard I can feel her wedding band digging into her skin. I smile apologetically, but keep squeezing. I am reminded of the way all pregnant women in the movies need someone’s hand to aggressively grip. I channel all the anxiety that has welled up in me, anxiety stoked by airport coffee and paperback crossword puzzles and the dull craving for a cigarette, and I focus it on my poor mother’s palm. Afterward, once we have reached ‘cruising altitude,’ I let go and sigh delicately, visibly happy to be on a flying nightclub, as opposed to a flying hospital, which is what most other airplanes remind me of. In both, the air has the same stale quality; that sense of the unknown hangs low.
I turn to look back to Manhattan as we rise; the plane swivels to begin its trip West. From up here, I can make out the whole island. My heart seizes with the realization that almost everyone I love, everything I’ve done, lives and breathes and dies right there, on an island that, from up here, appears as tiny as a matchbook. A humid June haze—or maybe that’s pollution—hangs over the skyline forbiddingly. I see the Empire State Building striking out into the air proudly from the heart of Midtown. I see the tops of trees that the tip of Manhattan, near the Cloisters, wears regally like a forest crown. And from thousands of miles above, I see the Brooklyn Bridge elegantly stringing together boroughs that, like distant half-siblings, have at once everything and nothing to do with each other.
Turning from the window, I think with only the slightest degree of resignation, “I don’t live there anymore.”
Very nicely written. I couldn’t take a pick from the all those sentences if you forced me.