When I wrote this (before the holiday), my granddaughter E was in the air making her way home for Thanksgiving. It was the first time she flew alone. She is 18. Her first flight left at 6:00 am. I was up at 5:30 to text and make sure she made that early damn flight, because I'm a worry wart and an anxious freak. She did, no problems.
It reminds me of my first solo air travel. I was also 18, making my way from Chicago to San Francisco. My friends picked me up in South Bend and drove me to O'Hare airport in Chicago. When I said goodbye to my mother, I clung to her and cried. All it would have taken for me to stay was for her to ask me to. But instead, in her greater wisdom she said "This is what you want, go do it." So I did.
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| Me in San Francisco, 1970, turning 19 |
18 and 19 are tender ages. 1970 was a momentous year in so many ways, as I'm sure 2022 for your granddaughter. That photo of you is a treasure. Thank you for sharing it.
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DeleteJust a taste. I'd love to hear more of this journey you made. What made you want to do it? How did you fare? I've never been that brave.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'll write about it.
DeleteLook at you at 18! What a great photo of your beautiful young self. Eighteen must be the age for first flights. That's how old I was when I flew from L.A. to Newark, NJ.
ReplyDelete18 is a transformational age.
DeleteWhat a gift.
ReplyDeleteShe was pretty remarkable in that way.
DeleteBecause my Dad worked for Aer Lingus, I was able to fly between home (Limerick) and Dublin (college) but my first big trip was working at Kennedy Airport one summer. When I got there, I was terrified - everything was so big, so loud, so brash, so foreign! I sent a note to my dad to say I wanted to come home - Please! He tucked it into the breast pocket of his sports coat and said not a word to my mother. He was confident I'd settle down, calm down and be okay. And, to my own amazement, I was! I guess it's true that to grow you have to get out of your comfort zone again and again and again.
ReplyDeleteYour Dad was very wise.
DeleteWhat a great picture! I first flew on my own in 1978, when I was almost 12. I don't remember much about it.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Wow, 12 is young to fly alone. Were you scared?
DeleteWhat a sweet story. Did you go to San Francisco for school?
ReplyDeleteHa! No.
DeleteYou were brave to go on that adventure yourself!
DeleteNice to see a picture of younger you - at first I had thought that was your granddaughter!
ReplyDeleteI'm also a worry wart. I would probably have been up at 5.30 to make sure she caught the plane too!
ReplyDeleteI well remember my first flight - halfway round the globe, uncomfortable, sweaty, at low altitude (the plane was driven by propellors), occasionally frightening but Wow! So grown-up!
ReplyDeleteIt was 1956 so I was twentyish. And I was wearing civilian clothes, had to wear them. Why was that so odd? Fact is I had left journalism behind for two years and was en route to the island of Singapore where - in the service of my monarch, the late Queen Elizabeth II - I would be required to repair VHF transmitter/receivers so that people in warplanes could talk to each other and to air traffic controllers. The flight would cross at least a dozen countries and land in four or five of them; international law stated that I must not wear my Royal Air Force uniform while doing so. In the aircraft's cargo hold was my canvas kitbag stuffed to bursting; among my khaki denims was my battered cornet-trumpet with which I would eventually play hymn tunes (simple, no minor keys; the religiosity purely incidental) in the sight of palm trees.
Gosh, didn't you look glamorous. For the record, I didn't.
Great memory! Thanks.
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