As long as I have lived, I have always been defined by a self-created identity of "a child." Not a child as defined by age or in comparison to my parents, but I have always felt as though I was on the younger side of the population. Now, at age 25, I have recently had experiences which challenge this notion.
It started in 2011, when surprising everyone, even myself, when I truly get down to it, I left my partner of just over 10 years, and in the space of 8 hours, packed most of my earthly belongings into my rusty little ford and drove off, tears filling my eyes, to a destination which I could not myself clearly formulate. I ended up in a spare room of my friend, staring at the peeling wallpaper at the corner of the ceiling until the birds started singing and the sun cautiously began to rise. I think, at that moment, I moved beyond being a child. Even though I had lived independently from my father for almost 2 years, now finally alone, the true nature and challenge of the world, and the consequences of what I had created, began to register. It was exactly this time when I began to fly. I therefore have a deep connection between the end of my childhood and the beginning of my adventures in flight.
My correlation between my identity as a child and flight takes yet another form: that of an uncanny role reversal. When I passed my flight test last June and became a private pilot, I took a road trip to Tofino the next weekend. On the drive, I had much time to think, as majestic spruce and grey raindrops whizzed past. I was in complete awe that I could now rent a plane, and just fly away, going wherever I wanted, taking whoever I wanted with me. It was an amazing jolt of freedom, but also a healthy dose of responsibility. When I first began taking friends as passengers aboard, I was nervous but not daunted. As peers, I knew that they would be respectful and mostly in awe, experiencing their flight without judgement. My first passenger as a private pilot was my boyfriend, a man who had supported me and watched me in awe from both afar and near over the last six months as I worked towards my exams and flight test. I was overjoyed to finally include him in the experience in a tangible and sentimental way. My second crew was a group of work friends, who though I strove to impress, I didn't have to focus too much energy on doing so. They were in awe regardless. But when it came time to include my family in the experience, I found that I had never felt as nervous or small.
My mother and grandma were both decently acquainted with the world of general aviation, my mother having been married to my father, an air traffic controller, for 25 years. Since their divorce she still remained curious and relatively informed about flying. My grandma spent most of her life in small Canadian northern communities, relying on regional air transport. Their familiarity, however, meant nothing when I had them settled in as passengers one pleasant sunlit summer evening. As I went through my checklist, words stuck in my throat and I fumbled with steps I normally ran through fluidly. When I lined up for takeoff, my heart was pounding and I was acutely aware of the whirring of my mom's little camcorder. As we lifted off, my hyper awareness remained, I was vigilant of airspeed, my departure route, the squelch on the radio, every little thing seemed heightened and not quite right. After five minutes or so, however, that beautiful calm and flow of the pattern and tasks of flight calmed my mind. My heart slowed. My hands loosened their grip on the control column. I smiled as I watched my grandma stare at the ground below in rapt attention. It was beautiful. I realized what made me so much more nervous and aware. It was the unsettling feeling of a strange role reversal. I was the child, the grandchild. I had once been wrapped in a bundle small enough to cradle to the bosom, my very existence and survival had once depended on my family. I had once heard my mother's words as law, I had once needed my mother's hand in mine to guide me. Now it was me upon whom they depended for survival, me alone up here that they trusted. It was a beautiful ad humbling feeling.
Last week I was blessed to experience this feeling again. My boyfriend, a native of England, is rarely able to see his parents, and his father had just arrived for a visit. United in adventurous spirit, both men shared the adorable quality of enthusiasm and ability to be up for anything, the more adventurous the better. Therefore my boyfriend thought it would be exciting for his father to go flying. I waited and waited for the perfect day, and finally one came. On a crisp and sunny spring morning we made our way to the flying club. The familiar waves of nervousness and hyper vigilance came crashing upon me again on route to the airport. This time my wings were weighed by something even heavier. Although most would argue that when I landed in the field last summer with my boyfriend on board, I saved his life by quick and unwavering decision making and avoiding a worse future problem, but I still battled with guilt. When I met his father, my initial impression, before happiness to finally meet him or pleasure at seeing father and son reunite, was "your son could be gone from you and it would have been thanks to me." The thought caused me to break into sweat and almost squirm with remorse. As an only child myself, I will never forget the look in my own father's eyes when he saw me in the hospital bed for the first time after the ambulance had evacuated us from the field. In his eyes was a haunted look for the child, the light in his life that was almost extinguished. I couldn't imagine what my boyfriend's parents had felt when they heard the news of the forced landing from the other side of the world. Despite my guilt and fears, I was too pervaded by a feeling of positivity and optimism. A feeling Of being eager to share my love of flight with Others, which had become more frequent after my float rating, also made me excited. Although I still stumbled, I had come so far from nights of laying awake, worries and flashbacks that interrupted my life, and moved to a place of confidence and happiness in my flying again. I was overjoyed when my boyfriend had suggested taking his dad for a flight when he heard he was coming to visit. I had too many people believing in me now to let my success be undermined by my own fears and insecurities.
As we took off that day, father and son on board, there was no fear. There was heightened awareness, there was vigilance, there was caution and scrupulousness, but no energy was wasted on fretting or contemplating the past. The feeling of role reversal was still strange to me, but pleasantly so. The pilot that day was no longer a child. She was a woman, with clarity, passion, growing confidence, and pride. No longer a child, yet grinning into the cloudless sky as if she had been given a handful of candy and toys, her eager craft tumbling and playing in the skies.
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