Is It Supposed to Be Like This?

We had a crazy plane ride yesterday as we began our son’s Spring Break.  The kind of flight that feels like it’s shaving years off your life, if you even make it that long.

The plane was jumping and jerking in the air, and our stomachs were in our throats.  The view outside the windows was bobbing and dipping.  It was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying, which you can tell by the look on my daughter’s face in the picture above. We were laughing and shrieking, holding hands, and throwing each other silent looks that said with unnaturally wide eyes, “Is it supposed to be like this?”

I was pretty sure, but not certain, that we were not going to die.  I don’t love that feeling, to be honest.  I much prefer being able to tell that everything is fine when on a plane.  But this was not one of those rides.

During this episode, my son was so engrossed in his iPad that he didn’t even seem to notice that the rest of us were contemplating our wills.  If this is not proof of the dangers of technology, I don’t know what is.  But I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to interrupt his reverie to point out our proximity to our mortality.

As we approached landing, I was still extremely nervous.  I was trying to convince my daughter that our flight of fear was about to end, but I was worrying to myself that it might not end well.  How would the wheels hit the ground when we had spent the whole flight at weird angles?

“Ten, nine, eight, seven. . . . ” I counted down to Gabby as we neared the ground, praying to myself that when we touched down we did so the way plane manufacturers intended.

My breath caught in my throat as I reached my final countdown.   It took a few moments before I could tell that we were going to land properly.  But we did.

I am always grateful when a plane lands successfully.  I don’t remember ever being as grateful as I was when that plane landed yesterday.

We got in our car and headed straight to dinner.  I also don’t remember drinking a glass of wine faster than I did last night.  I think wine might have been invented for occasions such as these.