I’m rereading a collection of short stories called Circling the Drain, written in 1999 by Amanda Davis, a young author with a compelling gift for poetic language. A writer of tremendous talent and promise, Ms. Davis had two books published: the collection of stories I brought with me on our recent vacation, and a full-length novel titledWonder When You’ll Miss Me. Daughter bought them both for me a few years ago after I read glowing literary reviews for the author, followed by the headline that she perished in a plane crash at the age of 32.
I despise flying and all the physical, emotional, and psychic reactions it floods me with. Before I met Husband and remarried nine years ago, it had been almost two decades since I flew the friendly skies, an amount of time that coincided with the approximate age and existence of my children. The fear of being whisked from the earthly world my kids would continue to inhabit without me should the metal meet the road resulted in my keeping both feet on the ground with any excuse possible. Until I met Husband.
To make memories with an adventurous new mate, I had to suck it up. And suck it up I did, with barely a year going by that didn’t include at least one flight, often more. Amanda Davis may have been my polar opposite in her love of the sky. Her father had a pilot’s license and the family flew for fun and recreation. When William Morrow refused to give its exuberant author a book-signing tour, she arranged one herself and took off in a Cessna piloted by her dad and accompanied by her mom. Their plane crashed into a North Carolina mountain en route to its next stop. There were no survivors.
We had a saying in the air: Fly and forget it … if we were sad, angry, glum: fly and forget it. There was something about being above the earth arcing toward a horizon that made the world and all its messy problems seem small and manageable. We felt, literally, above it all.
– from Circling the Drain
Husband and I are home now on solid ground after a stellar vacation in French Canada. The night before we flew back to JFK, I had my usual preflight dream. The one that finds me walking across our living room floor toward the kitchen as I watch a plane touch down on the street outside. Suddenly the room turns sideways and I’m struggling to stay upright. My feet slide away from me and I flail my arms trying to find something solid to grab onto. The plane outside the window is safely landed and motionless. It’s the house that’s crashing.
I sat up with a frantic start in the dark Montreal hotel room with too many hours before morning. Alone with sleeping Husband and a book by an author whose death came right out of my dreams. Come on, sunrise.
Giving Daughter’s Fotos the day off, here are my Canada pictures as promised in Play Money and Lights in the Sky
celebrate quebec
mavericks
montreal convention center
parc sculpture
ring of fire
crowded sky over chateau frontenac
finale