The Moment

I vividly remember the moment I stopped believing in airplane flight. I was on a train traveling north out of Paris to Charles de Gaulle. The track skirted up against the part of the airport where the big planes that flew across the Atlantic awaited their next take off. I looked at the massive planes, all shiny silver, and thought to myself, ‘There's no way that’s getting off the ground!’

Before then, I’d never doubted air travel. My first airplane trip was when I was about three months old and my parents took me back East to meet my mother’s family for Passover. I have vague memories of another trip back East, in a plane where pairs of seats faced one another like on a train, or ferry. The first flights I distinctly remember were between Madison and the Twin Cities. My mother and I made the trip when my Bubi (my paternal grandmother) had one of her heart attacks. I remember the unbelievably loud propellers that sat on the wings but, more traumatically, I remember losing Bashful from my 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' cut out set. Bashful was my favorite. 

By the time I boarded my flight at Charles de Gaulle, I had amassed thousands of air miles (and, in fact, that flight was the last leg of my second trip around the world). During all those flights, there definitely had been some uneasy moments, especially flying home from college at the holidays with the plane packed claustrophobically full. Oh, and the landing in Nanjing on my junior semester abroad where the wing came way too close to the ground on touchdown. But mostly, air travel seemed pretty safe and I’d never been terribly concerned flying. 

With that flight out of Paris, there was anxiety. It held on a little over the years, although it’s gone now. Flying is still less thoughtless for me than it had been before that moment when I lost my belief.

Monday morning, walking to work, I had a similar moment of something seeming impossible. As I crossed a street, I was noticing the manhole covers. One was marked DRAIN, and I always notice those because of a photograph I saw once where just the word RAIN was visible on a wet manhole cover. The other was marked WATER. 

Maybe it is all the rain we’ve gotten lately, coupled with the campaign that points out all drainage with signs reminding folks that everything that goes down them flows in to Puget Sound, but the thought of the water I drink somehow safely making its way through city streets suddenly seemed as unlikely as a ton plus of airplane getting off the ground. This moment doesn’t seem to have made a difference in my behavior or anxiety levels thus far. I am still drinking water from the places I have for years, and still believing it won't hurt me.