The Great Disruption

It's a new day!

This Whole Thing.  We're all in it together, Friends, and we're all sharing the same kinds of feelings about it, from what I gather.  It runs along a spectrum.  Same feelings, different intensities.  And that's okay.

I've break-danced all over the anxious, tense, uptight, pissed-off section of the spectrum.  Every so often, I'll spin on my head on Fear.

Maybe it was the blue sky, the BLUE SKY after days of thinking that yesterday was going to be rainy and miserable, but I had this overwhelming sense of wonder at all of this.  I stand in awe, in every sense of the word, as I think about the way Everything has come to a halt or near-halt.  We've hit pause.  It's been a disruption.  If I had a say in the way history books remember this time, I'd call it "The Great Disruption."

And I think what has a lot of us all keyed up is that in our hearts, we know things aren't ever going to be Normal again, the way they were before this all started.  I've mourned that fact for weeks now.  Normal wasn't really perfect, but it worked.  Might as well make the best of things if they work, and there really isn't a lot you can do about it.  Bloom where you're planted, make do.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Except, in allllll the time I've had to Think (and even for me, it's been Lots of Time! Normal wasn't really where it was at, was it?  A lot of things didn't work.  A lot of our Normal Lives were a giant, fiery shit-show, and we just took it for granted that they had to stay that way because that's how they've always been.  If I got started on all the specific things that we've just made do with,  collectively, because they were too big and complex to know where to even start to fixing, I could go on for days, and you could, too, Friends.  And we'd get all up in a whole big argument about it all, because we'd focus on the little nit-picky things and forget that we wanted to change the big picture.

So.  What I offer today, right now, while we're all on Pause, is that this Great Disruption is a Great Opportunity.  There are a zillion lessons to be learned from All This.  Big and small.  Two months ago, we could all tensely agree that while things weren't exactly broken, they weren't exactly not broken, either.  Now that everything's stopped and we have time to really look at them, I think we can all agree that welp, Babies, it's broken now!  All of it!  And why, if we didn't like the way things were Before, would we bust our butts to build it all back up like this Great Pause, this Great Disruption never happened?

This is a Great Opportunity for some out-of-the-box thinking!  We've had to do things we thought were impossible, two months ago.  Things have shattered and fallen away, leaving brand new vantage points.  It's already all broken and messy and we have to build our world back anyway.  Would we all be willing to let go of the way things used to be and build it all back in a way that works better for the way we live now?  We can keep the parts of the past that worked, because there was a lot of good.  But we can upgrade the crummy stuff that we all put up with just because to Something Better.

It's hard to let go, even when we know it wasn't working.  But we're all in this together.  We all have each other.  I'm still a little bit afraid, because I'm as resistant to change as the next gal.  But it's also really exciting to think that we can cast our baggage to the four winds and begin anew!

A Stay-at-Home Survival Guide from Your Reformed Hermit Friend

I always wear "real" clothes, whether I'm going anywhere or not!

Okay, so "Survival Guide" might be a bit dramatic, but you've got to acknowledge that when it comes to staying at home and not going batty over it, I'm kind of a pro.

See, I've been a stay-at-home-something for about a decade and a half.  Well before Government-Mandated Sparkling Isolation was handed down from On High to a nation that literally has rebellion against authority hard-wired into its blood, woven into its fabric, there were weeks-long stretches of time when I didn't leave my house.  The only people I'd see were my dog and my husband, and when she finally came along, my daughter.

I'm not agoraphobic or anything.  Never was.  I just had no real need to leave my home, so I just stayed put.  I'd go outside with the dog.  I'd go to essential appointments.  I'd make grocery runs.

Sound familiar, yeah?  Well, the difference is that it was all by choice, not order.

But we have to bloom where we're planted right now, Babies, and we can do it.  I have a few tricks up my sleeve for keepin' feeling "normal" (whatever that means for you), even if you've got to stay home.

1. Go to bed and get up at the same time every day.  We're creatures of habit and our bodies like predictability and routine.  
2. Shower.
3. Put on real clothes.  You can fight me on this if you love staying in your jammies all day.  That was never my deal, unless I'm so sick I can't even get out of bed.  I'm not really even okay with leggings and loungewear during the day, because it just throws off my whole deal.  So I wear real clothes, like you'd see me wearing if I were out-n-about.
4. Do your hair.  Even if I know I'm not going to see anybody, I feel better about myself if my hair's did.   It doesn't have to be fancy.  Just not all up in a weird bunnamabopper or that thing where it looks like I stuck my head in a blender and jammed in a few dozen bobbies.  Sometimes my hair eventually ends up in a weird bunnamabopper, and I'll stick in pens and pencils if I'm really in a Project, but I start out the day with it in some semblance of "done," whether it's air-dried, blown straight, or up in a braid.  Because practicing doing my hair on days when nobody's going to see me is good practice for when I have to get out the door fast on days they do.  This is just me.
5. Put on makeup.  Ev-uh-ree.  Dang.  Ol'.  Day.  I do it all.  Bondo, primer, color, clear-coat, mascara.  A little lippy, usually.  Whether people are going to see me or not, because again, it's good practice for trying out something new (hiya, winged eyeliner!), and also good insurance that I can be pretty fast and accurate at slapping my face on my face for when I need to zoom out the door.  Also, it's hella unsettling to see my face in the mirror without makeup on it.  A girl can jump and shout out "Jee. Zus!" only so many times in a day, yo.
6. Fellas, do your grooming routine and shave your damn neck-hair.  Not telling you how to live your life, but you don't have to look like you're homebound in gaming chair in your mom's basement.  Just keepin' it real.
7. Eat regular meals.
8. Hydrate properly.
9. Social Media is a lifeline in these times.  Also, the phone.  Face-Time.  Email.  Snail-mail.  zOMGWhatFun- could you imagine getting and sending pen-pal mail through USPS from everybody you can't see in person right now?  Or if that's not your bag, there's still Social Media.  Seriously.  When I finally came to the Facebook party (in 2008), it was a game-changer for me.  My friends had scattered to the Four Winds, I wasn't super-great at creating opportunity to make new friends, but with Facebook and social media, it's like we're all together, even if we're in different states, cities, countries, continents.  And I've been led to a lot of friends that I now see in real life, because we got to know each other better on Social Media.  It has been a literal lifeline for me in my adult life!  Like any other tool, use it responsibly.  Don't be a drama-llama.
10. Have something to look forward to every day.
11. Pick up a hobby that you've wanted to get to or get back to.  Bluprint, CreativeBug, JoAnn, Michaels, YouTube... they've got a wealth of tutorials out there, if you've got the time... and Time is something we've all got right now!
12. Maintain a good sense of humor.  My favorite advice from my grandfather.  Being able to laugh at the absurdity of it all, at the absurdity of ourselves... that's pure gold, right there.

This is just my run-down of essentials that I practice when I'm not going out of my house.  I can hermit like it's my job.  Sometimes, it IS my job.  It's all our jobs, now.  And we're going to be all right.  Maybe a little cramped in the style department, because as a nation, we were founded on the practice of pushing back and shrugging off authority.  We're a nation of rebels.  We don't like being told what to do, even if it could be in our best interest. We'll be back to going out-n-about soon (in Grand Scheme of Things Thinking).  In the meantime, try to keep yourself feeling as normal as possible.  It'll help a little bit with making this weird situation we're all in feel a little more bearable.  I promise, Friends!

Shifting to a More Positive Gear

My "Things That Didn't Suck Today!" notebook and a blue Pilot G-2 07 gel pen.

I'll tell you what, Babies, this social distancing, quarantine, sparkling isolation, quasi-lockdown, Matrix resetting itself thing has really been working on me.  To be honest, as I sit here writing, I can't believe this is really happening. 

It's kind of weird, too, because as Spring approached, I was kind of getting irritated at April from Six Months Ago for committing April Right Now to a bunch of stuff on the calendar back in the fall.  I don't know what was up with that broad, signing me up for so many things to do back then!  So this sparkling isolation handed down from On High should come as an agent of relief, since all those commitments have been postponed indefinitely or canceled altogether. 

But it's had me feeling Some Type of Way instead.  And I've been known to get all complain-y and negative.  That's no way to be, especially in these troubled and troubling times.

So I've seen that some of my friends are keeping a Gratitude Journal, and others still are writing things that are blessings to them on strips of paper and putting them in a Blessings Jar. 

And those things are really great and will help them feel gratitude, help them see how blessed they are.  But I realized it really isn't "me" to have or write in a Gratitude Journal.  I'm really not going to abide by a Blessings Jar.  I can't even stick to a Swear Jar, and look at all the material I give myself daily!  Hourly!  Minute-to-minute!

But I recognize that I need to pull myself out of this funk.  Maybe you do, too, but Gratitude Journals and Blessings Jars aren't really your bag, either.  That's okay.  We're okay, Friends!  So instead of keeping those things, I've been keeping a little notebook that I call my "Things That Didn't Suck Today" journal, and in it, I write one thing every day that didn't just suck to beat all. 

It's kind of like Gratitude and Blessings' back-handed compliment-slinging sister.  I try to think of my favorite thing about Today that didn't suck, and I write it down.  It feels a little more natural than being all up in Gratitude right now.  I'm meeting myself where I am, but also moving to shift into a more positive gear... hopefully.  Maybe in a couple weeks or next month or sometime in the Future, I'll have shifted out of "Hey, this day didn't suck!" to "This rad thing happened today!"

If you're having a little trouble dealing with all this too, Friends, and aren't we all, in our own ways, maybe you'd want to meet yourself where you are and start a little "Things That Didn't Suck Today" journal of your own.

You don't need anything fancy.  My Baron Fig notebook would slip in my back pocket if I wanted it to. I usually reach for my Pilot G-2 07mm blue gel pen, but any pen or pencil will do if you're not a stationery snob like I am.  The idea is simplicity and accessibility. 

You're not writing a sonnet every day, either, unless you dig that kind of thing, in which case, probably "Things That Didn't Suck About Today" isn't up your alley.  Just write the day and date and a simple line about what didn't suck about today.  Then close up the book and press on 'til it's time for tomorrow's entry. 

I feel like this acknowledges that we're not really feeling grateful, but we're looking for ways to look for the good instead of dwelling on all the things we can't do during this massive reset of the Matrix. 

If you take umbrage to the Suck, then call your journal an "It Wasn't All Bad" notebook.  Whatever works for you.  This moment in time isn't going to last forever.  Someday, all this quarantine and uncertainty (and yeah, moments of panic) will be a story we tell.  And the more we can remember about how we felt right now will help us feel actual gratitude for not being in this present situation anymore. 

How 'bout it, Babies?  You with me?

Armchair Astronaut

I coulda been piloting this space capsule!

In Second Grade, I decided I wanted to be an astronaut, and immediately set to learning everything I could learn about what astronauts do, and what NASA is and how it works.  I drew space capsules and space shuttles as obsessively as some girls draw horses.  I learned the names of the Mercury Seven, the Challenger Seven, and every woman who went into space to date. 

I developed the habit or affectation of looking up into the night sky and getting lost in the stars.

I learned all the words of "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Junior, and I felt them in my soul every time I'd recite the poem to myself:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; 

Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds,- and done a hundred thousand things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, 

I've chased the shouting wind along and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue,

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or ever eagle flew-

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Wanting to be an astronaut was part of my Identity for the whole rest of the time I was in elementary school.  If a friend didn't know what to talk about with me, space was always an excellent option.  Over the summers, every so often I'd get a letter from a friend with a tear-out from a magazine with something about space, or a movie about astronauts.  I still remember getting a clipping from one of my friends of the poster for the movie SpaceCamp, the one where a bunch of Space Camp-attending teenagers accidentally get launched into space on Atlantis, and they have to use their skills, ingenuity, and luck to get home safely.  

Looking back on that movie, what a gas it was. All of the actors except Joaquin Phoenix (who went by "Leaf" at the time) were well into their twenties, which made them tower even more cool and authoritative and capable to a little eight-year-old looking up at them.  The movie sincerely took its sincerity very seriously.  It was utterly implausible.  And yet, I bought into it, hook, line, and sinker.  We taped it from the TV and I watched it every day when I got home from school for a while.  

And then as Atari was winding down (thank you, awful ET game!), we spied an Atari Space Shuttle game cartridge in the bargain bin at Hills and snapped it up.  The idea was an 8-bit adventure, launching the spacecraft, getting it into orbit, docking with a space station, and re-entering and landing the space shuttle safely.  I never got out of "easy" mode, but I loved the way that game was a launchpad for my imagination!  

I was kind of hokey about it.  I'd get my snow-suit on, and my grandma's old snowmobile helmet, and then tip the Lazy-Boy recliner onto its back on the living room floor so I could go through the launch sequence.  And I'd spend hours in "space" in that armchair.  Sometimes I'd enlist my sister to come along on a space mission.  Sometimes my dolls.  Sometimes it was the family cat who'd go to space with me, but he'd always try to take the controls while we were landing, and nobody's got time for that kind of power-struggle when one false twitch could make you burn up in the atmosphere!

For those years of my life, I was so sure I was going to be an astronaut.  It would be perfect!  I was shaping up to be fairly compact, which was great because there's not a lot of room in spacecraft.  Finally something a short person could excel at!  Floating around in the tight spaces of the space station!  I was quite afraid of heights, notorious for my meltdowns on Darien Lake's Giant Wheel (the amusement park's located between Buffalo and Rochester, NY, but you can see Toronto, Ontario, freakin' CANADA from that Giant Wheel on a clear day), but I reasoned that astronaut training would train me not to be afraid of heights, and even if not, once I was in space, I wouldn't know how high up I was anyway, so I wouldn't have to be afraid.

The magical thinking of an elementary schooler, am I right?!

But reality set in in seventh grade.  I think that's the case for a lot of us.  Seventh grade is the grade where childhood dreams go to die.  I learned right quick that I was super-not-good at the maths required for astronauting or engineering.  I was also awful at science.  And I wasn't great in tense, clutch situations.  The dream of April the Astronaut faded and got put in the scrapbook of memory in short order, a story I'd tell by eighth grade. 

I'll tell you what.  I never stopped looking up at the night sky and getting lost in the stars.  I got to college, and my junior year wound up in a Physics and Astronomy course.  I was in with a bunch of hard-science types.  I got the top grade in the class.  The professor had been part of the astronaut program at NASA, but never went to space.  The class was far from my major of Creative Writing (or was it?), but it still stands tall as in my top 5 favorite classes from my entire higher educational experience.  I always kind of wondered what if...

Anyway.  I might not be an armchair astronaut anymore.  But I will never, ever stop looking up at the night sky and getting lost in those stars.  

My Soundtrack Sunday

Well, I'm still on that meme on Facebook about if you're sitting in a bar and a song comes on, and you suddenly think of me, what song is it?  And I like that meme.  I've gotten some very interesting answers and found some new favorite music from the things my friends posted.

And I've learned that I kind of have a brand- "Enter Sandman" by Metallica gets mentioned in the same breath as my name quite often, both while playing this Facebook game, and in real life.  It's my anthem.  "Bohemian Rhapsody" is another one people hear and think of me.  Maybe my personal brand is flamboyantly dark?  Maybe darkly flamboyant?  Either way, I'll take it!

It's a lot of fun to hear how other people think of you, isn't it?  But I've also been working kind of intensely lately on how I think of myself, and putting together a personal soundtrack is kind of a fun exercise in summing up who I am, in this moment.  Maybe you'd want to give it a spin, too, after you read mine.  We've all got lots of time on our hands these days, and if I can make writers out of all my readers, don't you know I'd be grinning from ear to ear!

So, taking "Enter Sandman," "Bohemian Rhapsody," and "Free Bird" off my soundtrack because they're constants on my 'track, here's the soundtrack of April Blake, Citizen of this Strange World, right in this moment.

Run That Race (from Cars 3) - Dan Auerbach

Yeah, it comes from a kid's movie about cars that talk and have existential crises, but here's the deal.  I first heard it when we took our daughter to the cinema to see Cars 3 in the summer of 2017- right before she went to kindergarten.  I was on the brink of turning 39 (how precious!)  The words hit me right between the eyes.  It's about wondering if it's time to hang things up.  Fearing the outstretched hands of time.  "I feel discouraged and I doubt myself, but you know you can't blame it on nobody else..."  

I'll invoke my pal Ho Lee Schitt here.  I'll tell you what, Babies.  That is exactly where I was living as I could see my daughter growing away from me and into the person she needs to be.  Obsolescence was creeping in around the corners.  I was fearing the outstretched hands of time.  And then the song does a 180, and the narrator decides he isn't too old.  He shakes the outstretched hands of time, embraces having some miles on his tires and runs the race his way, his speed.  

And THAT got me, too!  Right there in the cinema!  I had that whole soundtrack ordered before we even got home that night.  That song speaks to the way I was mourning not being So Young anymore.  I was feeling obsolete and lost and not myself. I was noticing a few lines around my eyes.  I had to accept that my tires have some miles on 'em.  And you know?  That's okay.  These tires are just getting broken in, and they've got lots of miles left to go.  

"I'm finally livin' for myself again" and it might not set well with everybody, but everybody isn't running my race.  

You Want It Darker - Leonard Cohen

This is not a favorite of the people who live in my house, but the first time I heard this song, it blew my doors off, and I take every opportunity I can to listen to it.  It is dark and haunting.  It is an overt exploration of the religious mind, but as is the case with all art, the person who experiences it interprets it and applies it to themselves in their own way.  

You have to give it a listen for yourself, but the words that strike me about this song are 

"If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game

If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame

If thine be the glory, then mine must be the shame

You want it darker

We kill the flame"

I don't like to look at life as a zero-sum game, but the older I get, the more I realize that with some people, you just don't mutually bring out the good in one another.  You might not necessarily mean to do each other harm on purpose, but you certainly can't or won't heal the damage that's been done. Some situations, the deck's stacked against you for what ever reason, and you cannot win.  There is no judgment or bitterness in me when I say this; it just is what it is.  And instead of flailing against fate, sometimes you just have to accept there's no way out of this but out, and put up your hands and leave the game, whatever game that may be.  

And despite the inherent darkness in the themes of this song, I never think darkness is completely a bad thing.  We do our best sleeping in the dark, and we repair ourselves and dream.  You cannot appreciate the light without the dark.  So this song can be heard as bleak and dark, or you can choose to know that you have to embrace the dark in order to truly get the light.

This Is Me (From The Greatest Showman) - Keala Settle

In the movie, the Bearded Lady sings this song.  It is her song, but it also belongs to all the other "circus freaks" in PT Barnum's curiosity show.  They do not fit in to the norm.  They have taken their lumps for being different.  They have been through fire.  And yet, here they are.  Strong, and with their heads high.  They don't wither because they're weird.  They run with it!

I've felt like a weirdo my whole life.  I see the world a thousand different ways in one glance.  I want to learn everything, everything while I'm here.  I was the kid who'd start out looking something up in an encyclopedia or dictionary for school, and hours later, still not have my work done because Serendipity grabbed me by the hand and took me down a rabbit hole where I'd read the reference book like it was the latest Sweet Valley High.  I never fit into any one particular group in school- I wasn't a jock or a cool kid or a popular kid or a vo-tech kid or an ag kid.  But I got along with them all.  I loved them all.  The friends I was closest to were a little quirky and off-beat themselves.  We were bruised, and brave, even if we didn't know it at the time.  

And as an adult, I don't conform any more readily than I did as a kid.  I don't fit into any one Grown-Up Social Group, but I can move among them all with the same ease, and more comfort, than I did as a school-kid.  I still slip down reference-book rabbit holes and lose hours in learning.  My idea of fun is not a crowded bar or concert or party, at all.  You'll most likely find me distractedly staring up at the stars or the clouds or divining some knowledge from the crags on the trunk of a tree.  

Plus, I'm short with red hair, which in some circles is enough of an aberration to make me an outcast.  There are people who Really Hate Redheads, for whatever reason, and if my hair already sets them on edge, they're going to find my oddness a little unsettling and off-putting.  And that's okay.

This is me.

September - Earth Wind and Fire

September is my favorite month, and the exuberance of this song is like wind right in my sails.  I don't think much more needs to be said about it than that!

Fall on Me - Andrea Bocelli and Matteo Bocelli

I think of my daughter when I hear this song.  She's eight.  But she's growing up so fast. Even if I don't tell her with words every day, in my heart, I look at her and think,

Believe in yourself, every step that you take.

Know I am smiling with pride every day.

My love will forever be stronger than stone,

So don't be afraid- you are never alone

Tomorrow isn't guaranteed for any of us, but I want her to know that I will always be her soft spot to land while I am here, and if I ever am not, I will always be with her.  I will always be so proud of her.  I will always be her light in the dark, wherever I am, wherever she is.

With or Without You -  U2

T.N.T. - AC/DC

Watch me explode!

Get Back Up Again (From Trolls) - Anna Kendrick

Lately, I'm pretty sure this is my life's anthem.  If you knock-knock me over, knock-knock me over, I... will... get back up... again!

The Show Must Go On -  Queen

The show must go on

Inside my heart is breaking

My makeup may be flaking

But my smile... still...stays...on

There's so much that's uncertain right now.  There has been so much that's uncertain.  Globally.  Personally.  But every day I get up and do my hair and makeup, even in Sparkling Isolation, and I will smile, smile, smile through it all, even if the black ink I draw around my eyes has run and I'm peering at the world through dark, dark glasses.  

The show must go on. 

Don't Stop Believin' - Journey

Despite my darkness and oddness and tears, I really believe that in the end, I'm an aggressive optimist.  I try to find the glimmers of silver linings.  Sometimes I have to be Dramatic first, but I believe that my best days are ahead of me.  I believe collectively that OUR best days are ahead of us!  And I will not stop believin' that!

So there's my soundtrack for my life, right now at this moment.  At least the first disk.  I could go on and on and on here.  But you get the idea.  I really think you ought to put together YOUR soundtrack for your life at this moment. 

Free Bird, Part Two

So like I said.  These are weird times, and I've been sitting and thinking about that Big Thing I Did going on three weeks ago.  It feels like yesterday, and it also feels like another life.  Even though statistically, the drive to the airport is more dangerous than the flight (maybe that's only true for commercial flights, but it's an adage I always told my Friends Who Worry, which, in hindsight, probably wasn't the right thing to say).

But back to Free Bird, and all the Thoughts.  I've just felt as though it could be any of our time, at any time.  You just never know.  One day you're cheating Death by flying a plane or driving too fast or riding a motorbike or mouthing off to the wrong person at the bar, and the next day you're taken out by a virus that's sweeping through the population.

Or complications from a tick-bite.  I hate ticks.  Gross.

But all this existential dread swirling around in the cosmic cocktail around us has had the opening line from "Free Bird" on a continuous loop lately.  And please don't think I'm fixin' to do anything imprudently permanent like slip out the back door and never be heard from again.  It's just in times like these, I don't think it's out of line to wonder:

If I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me?

It's a fair enough question.  Humans have had a drive to be immortal since before Beowulf.  We want to be remembered.  Some of us do become immortal, legend, remembered for thousands of years.  The rest of us become memories only in the ether, and in the blood and bones of generations of our successors.

The more concerning thing to me is, if I leave here tomorrow, how will you remember me?

The day my whole life flashed before my eyes in the plane, I saw my highs and my lows both.  I saw myself as hero and villain.  In my own narrative, of course I play the hero, but I have enough of a jaundiced eye to know that I can and do feature as the Big Bad in the personal narratives of others.  I wish I could say in the ten years since that day, I've thrown the balance more in favor of being on the good side rather than the big bad, but sometimes you can be a villain and not even know.  Or you can do the wrong things for the right reasons.  And when I read Harry Potter, I of course identified first and strongest with Hermione, but Snape was a close second.  A White Hat looking like a Black Hat because he had a job to do. 

There was a meme going around Facebook a few days back that sort of asked this question- If I leave here tomorrow, how will you remember me? but it was worded a little differently: "You're sitting in a bar.  All of a sudden a song comes on and you think of me.  What song is playing?"  It's a reaching out while we're all still here, isn't it? 

I don't know how you'd remember me if I left here tomorrow.  It's probably none of my business.  I hope I leave a mark.  I hope you remember that my heart was in the right place, that I tried to make sure that if you were down when you met me, you walked away with maybe a smile on your face.  I hope you remember that I always tried to be a better person, whether I failed or succeeded.  I always tried.

Anyway, relax.  I'm not planning on leaving here tomorrow.  I feel uncertain, but not morbid.  I am not staring longingly into the Void.  It does not beckon me.  My face is looking up at the sky with wonder, and my feet are tethered to the ground.  I always come back down to earth. 

These are strange times we're living in.  None of us has seen anything like what we're all living through.  We're living through it, though.  Some day, hopefully soon, these weird times will be just a story we tell and a lesson we learned. I do feel like there's this great shifting of the ground beneath all our feet, and in times when there are great shifts, maybe it doesn't hurt to tell the people who are important to you what they mean to you. 

All of us Free Birds are part of a larger flock. And that, you'll never change!

Free Bird, Part One

You know, right before the world shut down, (Sunday, March 15, to be exact), I flew my plane again.  That's kind of a big deal, because ten years ago, on April 18th, I had one of those experiences in that plane that makes a kid see her entire life before her eyes, in the time it takes to blink.

It was April 18th, 2010.  There was a heavy crosswind.  It was heavier than I would have attempted all on my own, but my friend and flight instructor was with me.  He and I flew a lot together even after I got my license, because we both needed the hours, and we always had a lot of fun flying together.  We were taking turns shooting touch-and-goes.  It was my turn to land.  I had my power at full take-off as I came in on the landing, because my vertical climb indicator said I was sinking 1000 feet per minute. I remember muttering to him, "That can't be right," and tapping on the gauge to try to get the needle to move.  The engine didn't sound right.  We checked to make sure the fuller tank was set.  We double-checked the carburetor heat to make sure it wasn't carb-ice.  He told me to give it more power.  I told him there was no more power to give.  He asked if I needed him to take the controls and I said I had it, but be ready.  He always was.  And our usual cockpit banter went cold and silent.  Tense.

I remember the way it smelled in the plane that day.  I will always remember.  It's a smell of 1970s electronics and vinyl and a faint hint of engine oil, which in that setting smells a lot like when you're heating vegetable oil up in a pan to flash-fry something.  Ever since I started flying, that smell has both thrilled and nauseated me.  

The orange runway-end-indicator-lights were coming up fast and close.  I remember looking at those REILs and wondering which one was going to catch the landing gear and send us ass over elbows on the threshold.  I wondered if there was going to be a fire.  I regretted not having time to radio in to Wellsville CTAF and tell them my dog was home alone and to ask someone to call my husband and tell him I loved him and I tried.  I wondered if dying was going to hurt much, and which one of Wellsville's fire departments would be the one that came and cleaned us up off the tarmac with shovels and hoses.  I saw my whole life in front of my eyes like a movie, all the happy times, and all the times I was a major asshole.  All of it in a single flash.

And then the next thing I heard was my friend's laugh break through my headset.  We were on the ground.  Our wheels were on the runway, and the big white runway numbers were flat and big in the windscreen, up ahead for Runway 2-8. We were elbows over ass, the way it should be.  

He looked just as shocked as I felt.

"You did it!" he said, laughing.  "I never doubted you."

"Like hell," I said.  And he laughed, and I knew he'd been clenching every muscle just like I'd been, but he let me take the landing, which we both knew had no possibility of an abort and go-around.  

"That's the first time I've ever seen you land and not take up the whole runway!" he teased.  His sense of humor always recovered a lot quicker than mine.  But I laughed just the same, because he was right, and I was just so damn happy to be upright on the runway and not dead and waiting for firemen to scrape me off the pavement.  

I cannot stress enough how exhilarating that feeling is.

He taxied us onto the apron, because at that point, I was shaking, insisting I was all right. Just shook-up.  He humored me.  The linesboy and a mechanic towed us into the Big Hangar, where schtuff really goes down, with the promise that they'd see what happened, get it fixed, and get me back flying before I got too snake-bit.  

Ha.

I flew with the chief instructor in the airport's Tomahawk, which was always my favorite little plane to fly- he made me fly a few days after the Incident, so I wouldn't get scared.  And then I had my Biannual Flight Review in the heat of July in that beloved little flying plexiglass solar cooker.

In the meantime, the mechanics were figuring out that Something Wasn't Right in the engine.  A cylinder (#3) had begun to separate.  The fresh overhaul that was a big selling point when I bought the bird turned out to be a slather-assy "field overhaul" done by a previous owner, and it amounts to taking apart the engine casing, slapping a little paint on things, maybe installing a new head gasket, and writing a "mission accomplished" in the logbook.  An airplane from a neighboring airport that summer had been contracted by the FDA to fly around central PA to survey tent-worm damage, and that airplane had engine trouble a mile from the Lock Haven airport, went down in a residential neighborhood, caught the power lines, caught fire, and killed everybody on board.  It left a mark at our airfield, because aviation tends to be a pretty small community.  That plane was a 1972 Cessna.  Mine's a 1972 Piper.  They both had the same engine.  It was their #3 cylinder that separated and did them in.  And I have dwelt on that awful coincidence since the day I was called and told about the accident.  It had us all spooked.

I had my daughter in 2011.  Life took over.  I got snake-bit by a basilisk.  The plane sat idle at the Wellsville Airport from 2010 until 2018, and the first time I went up in it with the mechanic who overhauled it, who is also a flight instructor, I had a full-on panic attack as we were landing.  

Because that was the same view I saw in April 2010 that day.  It was October, but a similar kind of windy day.  I'd been all talked up into trying to land.  I agreed, but reluctantly.  There was Runway 2-8.  There were those REILs- they look like orange T-shaped utility poles.  There were the precision landing stripes, those big white runway numbers.  That smell- old electronics and vinyl and oil getting ready to fry.  And my mouth got dry, my throat closed up, my chest tightened, my fingers started tingling, and I could not hear the throaty drone of the engine through my headset, for the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears.

"Your controls!" I said to the instructor, taking my feet off the rudders and my hands off the yoke, like a Vegas card dealer.  

"My controls," he said calmly.  "You okay?"

"Just not ready for this!" I said, folding myself up like a dying butterfly, closing my eyes behind my dark glasses- always dark, dark glasses.  

We landed without incident and I thanked him for the flight, for landing for me.  He said he'd be happy to work with me to get me back in the sky.  I asked him to help me sell the plane.  He said he would, and he tried.  We tried.  There were no serious bites on that line.  So my husband decided to finish up his certificate.  I got jealous, because that was MY thing.  I was the pilot.  So when it needed work, and then when the work was done and it was time to bring it home, I campaigned hard to get to be the one to fly it home.  We arranged for the former chief instructor at Wellsville, a friend and fellow who has over thirty-thousand hours in the sky, who has seen it all, and who knows how to manage a panicking rusty pilot like a champ, to ride to Williamsport and fly home with me, since I'm so rusty I have lots of work to do to get current with my license.  

And I did it.  I was terrified.  My emergency location transmitter was going nuts, which provoked ATC in two locations, I was freaking out, begging the instructor to just fly me home and I'd try again another day, and he folded his arms over his chest the way flight instructors do and said if it got really tough, he would, but he thought I needed to do this myself.  And I did.  And it was terrifying and rad, and I'm still processing it all.  I had every intention to get right back in the sky that week after the plane got home.  And then everything went on lockdown, and it's hard to social distance in a plane where you sit literally shoulder-to-shoulder.  So that's going to have to wait.  

But there's more to this story.  Of course.  I've been sitting for weeks, and we're in this weird time and I have Thoughts.  But I've kept you too long already.  You'll just have to come back for the second part of this Free Bird story, if you want.