Member-only story
Travel Changes Everything
My life in the sky
When I was 9 my mother moved from California to Washington state. From that point on I started flying alone once or twice a year, whenever I was on a break from school. I remember being so young the flight attendant had to escort me on and off the plane. After age 12, I was allowed to go it alone. I was sometimes paired with another kid doing the same thing, visiting their other parent, but that only happened twice.
It isn't a long flight, about an hour and forty-five minutes. Yet the striking difference, in reality, was a shock to me as a kid. It was hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I existed in two worlds. One with my father, in San Francisco, and one with my mother in Seattle.
The bridge was the airport, the airplane the travel. Being in the air, feeling at one with metal and sky. The familiar sounds of the flight attendants pushing the food cart, the rattling of bags of honey-roasted peanuts. I really loved those. The rush of take-off and landing. The moment when you saw your family again as you got off the plane (this was prior to 2001). All of it was typical life for me as a child.
Travel back then, for me, wasn’t for vacation it was for living the other half of my life.
