Saving Daylight

Rise and Shine.

Daylight saving time is still messing with my internal clock.  Thirty years ago, I could put in a 14-hour duty day flying, walk off the airplane at 11 p.m., and be back in the cockpit at 7 a.m. (the time spent getting to and from the hotel did not count as your legal "rest" back in the day).  I'd do that over and over, getting the occasional whopping 10 hours of rest in there to be legal, and still be bright and chipper.

Now, the only chipper I can conjure up is the wood variety I'd like to lob the alarm clock into just to hear it ground into bits.

Getting up early was even easier as a child. In Summer, we'd fling ourselves out of bed at the first rustle of a cereal box, eager to see who could get the prize out first.  Actually, the day the box arrived home, I would carefully slit open the bag, extrapolate the prize, examine it carefully, then carefully suture the bag and leave it for my brother, who then spent the rest of the prize-less day attempting to blow me up with water filled missiles (which said something about both our later career choices).

As soon as we were fed, out the door we went for a day of play, running so fast that we'd not feel the hot cement on our bare feet, cooling off only with the garden hose. It was probably just as well we didn't yet realize that 20 years later, we'd be running after something so hard we never felt it burn us.

Now, I'm spoiled, starting my day early for the most part because I want to. I've come to enjoy that quiet time before the city fully awakes when the sun rises over the waves that splash upon the shore of Lake Michigan with the lightness of youth, then vanish with grace and little resistance on the shore. It's those moments upon the shore, early in the day, that remind me of the ocean of my childhood, when I realized how much the water could bring and had yet to realize all it could take away. Some days, I'll have a couple of hours to myself before making a phone call for some consulting work, time to wander and dream, write, or bake a loaf of bread. On other days, I hit the ground running like a dog hot on the trail of a squirrel, eager for the chase. Each kind of day makes me appreciate the other.

There is a marked difference between getting up early because you want to and because you HAVE to. 

Getting up at 3:00 a.m. to ride a boat across the Columbia River Bar (which makes the Toutatis (Parc Astérix) roller coaster look like a stroll) to fish for salmon? No problem. Up at 4 to set up in a tree blind so you are in place as the first rays of sun shine their dapple promise of light on a 12-point buck.  Love to!

But it's another thing when that alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. because I had an early morning Zoom call with the Transportation Secretary of Angria or something.  There was no sun, or even the promise of sun, just an intense dark blue, almost black, that is not a color but an entire absence of color.  The room was cold, and I'd open the window, but not only would that make it colder but it would make my room smell like dead autumn leaves after it rains.  

There had better be coffee. If it is decaffeinated, remember I have crime scene tape.

But if you are like me you do it, because it's what you do, it's what you are, someone that says they'll do something and will, someone that doesn't believe in others being responsible for your bills. You are someone who had any inclination of entitlement wiped off their face by parents who remembered what it was to go to bed hungry growing up. It's trusting in the Lord in all things and caring for others while still remembering Galatians 6:5. For each one should carry their own load. 

I remember a day in the field, in unseasonably warm temperatures, that stretched into days, only time for a fresh biohazard suit with a handful of what I still think were hamster pellets and a swallow of liquid before going out again. I remember shouting directions and orders, trying to keep my team safe, where at the end, I could only speak in a scratched whisper, like a violin of which all the strings save one were broken in a final crescendo that ended like a blow.

I remember stopping at the store late on the way home, for a bottle of wine that might help me obliterate the images in my head, when the clerk said something about "I hate working nights."  I just smiled, thinking that at least she didn't have to put her clothes aside at the end of the shift to be burned, as I went home to try and forget. 

 

After days like that, getting up early now, completely clearheaded and at peace, eating a warm scone in my office while I write a technical analysis of some evidence for an attorney is a piece of cake.  

Retire, everyone said - you can sleep in, you can be a "trophy wife" (at my age, I think I'm a "participation trophy" wife).  Retire yes, trophy wife, no.  I found out many years ago, when dating someone who was wildly successful, that I was just something pretty to be worn on his arm, like that watch that cost as much as my car, only to find that when the day was done, and the business contract signed, I could be removed just as easily at the end of the night.  No thanks.  I'm happy with a husband who works as hard as I do, who will get up at o' dark hundred to make the coffee, if need be, just as I am known to be up early to make him sandwiches and pack some homemade cookies from my secret stash for an unexpected road trip.  Because, after enough late days and early mornings in a lifetime, you realize what truly is important. It's not living long enough to forget; it's living long enough to remember fully.

When the alarm goes off tomorrow, and I wake to dark skies, I'll smile with the thought of the grace of another new day crashing upon the shore, if perhaps in just a while longer.  I may be God's child and occassionally someone's technical expert, but at heart, I'm a vagabond without a master, and for all I cannot control in this world, that snooze button is mine. 

Back in a few

EJ brought home a flu bug (one that apparently the "flu shot" didn't cover this season), and I got it, and had to go to the hospital with some breathing issues.  Spent most of the week there, getting treatment with a respiratory therapist and a bunch of other anti-flu drugs, and am home now, recovering nicely.  

As I was sitting in my hospital bed drinking the "Ensure" they gave me I thought "great, it's just because I'm old. . . ."  The nurse read my mind and said, "3 other people hospitalized with the same thing here this week were in their 30's.

I felt a little better.

But be watching, this particular strain of Type A Influenza goes into pneumonia very easily, and there have been several thousand deaths in the US already this year from it.  Personally, Covid for me was like any other head cold; this was nasty.

I'll be back in a week, taking some time away from the computer to just chill and recover.  - Brigid

Taking Home the Bacon

I'm sure since it's February, most people have already given up on the New Year's resolution to "eat healthier".  I recently read a healthy eating blogger's words that each piece of bacon I eat takes a day off my life, all I could think of was "wow, I should have been dead in 1914!'

But I don't drink (gave that up years ago), eat junk food, or any seed oils/fake fats so a weekend treat of the stuff our grandparents lived off of is fine with me.   I had my physical on Friday, and after the nurse gave me the usual "what do you mean you're not on ANY meds?" she took my blood pressure, looked puzzled, took it again, and said "it's 106 over 61, is that normal for you?" (omitting what she wanted to say that was "I've never seen anyone your age with that blood pressure).

So I'm not starting that "no bacon" thing any time soon.  Especially when our forecast of temps in the 60's gave way to snow, 20's, and 40 mph winds.   Biscuits and Gravy just seemed the thing to do (recipe is for 3-4 folks, adjust as necessary).

• roughly 1/4 pound bacon
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/3 teaspoon Himalayan pink salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon maple sugar
• 2 and 1/2  cups milk plus 1/2 cup half and half (both at room temperature)

 click on this picture to enlarge, Sunny D. double dog dares you

First, cut the bacon into thirds. Put it into a large skillet and fry it over medium heat until cooked but not too brown. Remove the bacon and keep it warm. Stir the flour into the bacon grease (you want no more than 1/4 cup of fat, if you have really fatty bacon or make extra pieces, remove any excess fat beyond 1/4 cup and save for your green beans).

Whisk over low to medium heat until the flour absorbs the fat and is just turning golden brown.  Add the salt, maple sugar, and black pepper. Stir the milk a third at a time, whisking after each addition, allowing it to warm before adding additional milk.  Stir it in slowly, using the whisk to keep it from getting lumpy.  Simmer (not a full rolling boil, please!) for 3-5  minutes, until thickened, increasing heat as needed but NO more than medium. Serve over fresh Southern Biscuits  (no cans!) sprinkled with the crumbled bacon pieces and a pinch or two of Sweet or Smoked Paprika.

Retrievers in Sick Bay

Mom, I know you've been in the recliner with a blanket for a few days with the stomach flu, but just a reminder, I have a toy, and I am a retriever, when you're ready.  - Sunny D. Lab

Love's Fine Blade

A Man's morning shave ritual.  It's something that's been done for centuries, even in the days of rampant beards, a number of men preferring to remain clean-shaven. My brother always had a beard. With his red hair, build, and height, he very much resembled a Viking until cancer took 120 pounds off his frame, tempering his blade and honing his spirit.

Dad tried to grow a mustache once. It was in the early 70's, and was less than successful.  Dad had fine, dark red hair that gave rise to a mustache that was thin and sparse. I remember my Mom looking at the final outcome and trying her darnedest not to giggle and failing. Dad looked at it with a wry smile, shrugged, and went back to the bathroom and shaved it off.  Mom wasn't trying to belittle his efforts; her love fluttered over all of us like small wings, whisking away tears and brushing aside fears.  She treated Dad the same way, but oh dear Lord, was that a sorry-looking mustache, and even Dad realized it.

So from that day forward, each and every morning, Dad was in the bathroom shaving. For most men, the morning shave is something they must do each and every day.  It's done whether there is a houseful of kids bustling around, or they are on their own.

I remember my Dad's ritual, which remained as long as he lived.  After he did his morning workout (which he did six days a week for 80 years), he'd go shave.  He would never use an electric razor or any shave cream in a can.  No, Dad always had a mug of fine soap, a high-quality brush,, and a regular razor, with a straight razor when he wanted an extra-close shave for a special occasion.

I remember vividly those winter mornings of childhood, all of us dressing quickly, not so much that the house was cold, but hearts and blood and minds weren't quite awake yet, and movement was with willful purpose until such time as the chocolate milk or the caffeine kicked in. Dad would come through the kitchen from where he worked out, giving my Mom a kiss, the morning sun highlighting the freckles on her face, then a kiss for each of us, still in our pajamas, our faces innocent of either guile or water.

While my brother and I tried to stay out of his way, he'd shave, the tiny half bath, which was his bathroom, filling with steam. He was careful with the straight razor, pulling it over his features as carefully as if they were oiled glass, rinsing it in hot water, as the dark stubble on his face brushed away like filings from a new gun barrel.  I simply watched from the kitchen table, carefully and quietly.  Dad was so intent on his task that, before he even drew down that fine blade for its first stroke, his attention was almost perceptible in the air, surrounding him as fragrance does, leaving a subtle impression of his intent long before the act was complete.

When he was done, he'd finish as he started, with a clean washcloth doused in extra hot water, laid on his face to steam it.  Then he'd finish with a splash of aftershave.  There were only a few that he would wear.

Brut was beyond popular when I was growing up, one of the first to use a celebrity endorsement to persuade men that grooming wasn't for wimps.  Famed heavyweight boxer Henry Cooper was the original "face" of Brut, urging men to "splash it all over"long before David Beckham had his first shave.

Then there was the Hai Karate. My Dad had some of that and was supremely disappointed, and he used to tease my Mom that his bottle must have been a dud, since he didn't have to fend off any supermodels with karate chops like in the commercials. I don't remember what it smelled like, but I don't think he ever had to fend off Mom wearing it, though, come to think of it, once, when he put on too much, she drove a golf ball from the back yard through the back kitchen window with a Five Iron.

Dad gave that up for Old Spice, which he wore from then on, though once in a while he'd put on "Stetson" cologne and give Mom this look, and she'd giggle, and we'd go have a sleepover with our beloved Aunt and Uncle.

The last time I went home before the house was sold, Mom's giggling laughter but an echo in the walls, Dad gave me a big hug and I could still smell the Old Spice on his shirt, that "Dad" smell that's both reassurance and comfort.

Now, there's not just aftershave; there is cologne, shampoo, body washes, and shampoo/body washes (and what's the difference?).

Most advertise themselves as smelling like "fresh glacier extinguishing a giant forest fire full of deer in heat" or something like that.  I think the perfect man's natural scent would be a mysterious combination of gun cleaning fluid, coffee, bacon, and woodsmoke, but I loved Dad's Old Spice and the sandalwood scent my husband wears.

I'm happy my husband has much of the same ritual as my Dad, with the soap in a mug and the high-quality brush. He shaves at night after I've had my bubble bath, and as I curl up on the sofa with a s mug of herb tea. he'll begin that ritual.  He's shaved in hundreds of hotels, in countries all over the world, the ritual much the same, yet there's something almost peaceful about the act performed in one's own bathroom, in one's own home, small rituals of sameness.

Many of us wander all over the world, the esteemed and the obscure, the bold and the invisible, earning beyond the oceans our riches, our scars, and our destiny. But when we go home, we render an account; we sweep away the things we picked up that pull us down as we surround ourselves with the familiar, with that which is cherished.

When he is done, he'll join me on the couch in his bathrobe,  the house quiet but for hundred-year-old sconces on the walls that lend the room an aura of timelessness.  We won't talk much but of  books we are reading, of things in our home that need repair, or simply our day as we sit and stroke the flanks of a rescue dog that lies beside us. Such rituals are as fine as a blade, as comforting as stone. Shared, they are as bright and uplifting as the flash of sparks as dulled blade and stone meet.

There won't be any trips back "home", Dad gone 5 years now, but I remember the last ones vividly.  I dreaded the changes I would see in his physicality and changes in his world. But when I went home, and my frail Dad gave me an affectionate bear hug of welcome, he still smelled like Old Spice, and I was six years old again.

So much has changed, I remembered as I took one last look at my childhood home before the keys were passed to another family.  It was a house that saw both the lives and the deaths of my two moms, of my brother's presence that still thundered through the rooms, the walls now missing the medallions of his courage. So much gone, swirled down the drain with past and present tears. But still, I look at the world as I did those long ago mornings, carefully and quietly. And when my husband gives me a hug, and I breathe the familiar scent of shaving soap, it is the same feeling I had in my family home so many years ago. In that moment of ritual, I'm at peace, safe, and loved, with a future that is too far away to fear.
-Brigid

Warning: Cape Does Not Enable User to Fly

The cold this last week has been brutal, with temps in the minus 40s with the wind chill. Even on a calm day, it was in the minus numbers.  Not unheard of in Chicago, but it's been about 3 years since we had a January this cold.  The streets are empty but for the occasional passing car, only one brave dog walker out, stopping for a moment in the bitten shadow as a little dog in a Cubs dog hoodie stops to leave a message for a White Sox fan on a frozen tree. 

I grew up in a very small town near the Washington coast (in reality, we could be in Oregon in a few minutes by just driving across a bridge). Snow in the lower elevations was unusual; if there was any at all, school would be canceled.  I don't remember any days below 30, but we would have been out anyway. Snow was not cold; it was not working or worrying. It was a divine benediction that spread itself out onto the world where we waited with glee. Grabbing an inner tube to ride down the cleared foothills, shoving a couple of cookies in our pockets, we would head out into the dazzling white, heeding the siren call.

There, I would simply wait my turn with my tube on a small slope at the lake we called the "widow maker", content to just sit and look up into the wonder as we waited our turn. That tube was not my transport to the stars; it was a defiant gesture against the mortality that grew closer to the edge of our vision every year.  It wasn't a simple inner tube.  It was a defiant shout.  It was my superhero cape and my shield. 

Then, I'd launch myself with abandon out into it, flinging my form down onto an inner tube that was traveling downhill much faster than my dad would ever approve. There was nothing but movement and emotion, snow in the amber fire of my hair, my cheeks flushed, body arching up into the air, trying to maintain the moment that I knew would come crashing down much too quickly. At the bottom of the hill, chest heaving, I'd simply look up into the sky and say thank you, for that moment, as time gathered itself back up and started ticking again.

Face flushed with anticipation, I'd pat my pocket to make sure my cookie was secure, and I'd trudge back up the slope again to join my brother at the top.  As I peered down into the void, I'd say, "I probably shouldn't do this." Then we'd launch ourselves off yet again into space, remorseless and laughing, flying down the slope, potent, strong, as free as an eagle, not knowing yet as a child, that even for the eagle, all space can still be a cage.

Then we'd come inside for hot cocoa and maybe a little TV. My brother loved The Rifleman; I loved The Adventures of Superman, which was in syndication at the time. Mom even got me a Superman costume for Halloween once, and I was so disappointed when I saw the little warning tag that said "Warning - Cape Does Not Enable User to Fly. I loved the show, but the junior scientist in me probably wasn't the first nerd to notice that Superman's home planet was Krypton, and the fictionalized mineral from that place, kryptonite, was his undoing in many an episode, as it rendered him weak.  I knew Krypton was an inert mineral. Inert bodies do no harm, seek no revenge, provoke no hostilities. They shouldn't be of any concern. Yet sometimes those inert things, those small things, are the ones that hurt you the most. For lurking out there for Superman, Kryptonite was just waiting, biding its time (or another episode) until it would weaken the hero. 

Once adulthood hit, snow days were simply known as "work days". My flying had me based in Los Angeles on the West Coast for the most part. I do NOT miss flying out of LAX. The layout of the airport was so large and discombobulated the first time I landed there; my copilot told the tower we were "student pilots and needed progressive taxi instructions to the United Gate". He laughed and got us there, but it was never my favorite airport. But just being able to sit outside by the pool on a layover when it was snowing somewhere in the Plains was magic.

But it was no surprise that people actually get on airplanes to go places OTHER than LAX, so it wasn't a surprise that I spent too many nights flying into airports in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and Nevada when it was brutally cold and snowy. You'd start out thinking "oh this won't be so bad", then the sky would go from clear to a menacing outburst of fury, as if all the air had turned on you in confrontation, the tenuous earth only a memory beneath you.  Superman managed this with just a cape - we had computers and radar and jet fuel, and the weather was kicking us to the curb. In what seemed like just minutes, the wind would pick up further, the ice would start hitting our windshield as the copilot hurriedly told the flight attendants to be seated, and we'd look at each other with that "I could have been a mild-mannered reporter" look as Mother Nature whacked our backside with a stick.

But soon, we'd be on the ground, using differential power to SLIDE into the gate as thundersnow growled in the distance, the ramp a growing ice rink, while, once stopped, the passengers lined up like cattle trying to get inside to the barn where it was warm. But we got out and made sure our aircraft was safely in for the night, knowing we'd be back in 8 hours (yes, back in the day, your time spent traveling to and from the hotel to sleep was part of your legal "rest"). The airplane wasn't any warmer in the morning, but that was our job.

So, winters in the Midwest were not the surprise for me that many thought they would be. When I bought my first home here, my family said, "Oh, she'll move back out here in a year". But 30 years later, I'm still here, waiting for yet another major winter weather system coming down from the north with a lofty and mighty sigh. Like death and taxes, you are not exempt. Winter will arrive, not with a whimper, but a howl. It’s usually preceded by a trumpet of doom from the news channels, which are often wrong. I usually just check the radar on my computer to see what the weather is actually like out there. At least that way I could see the severe weather coming while Accu-Hunch was predicting another six inches of sunshine, while on sunny days, they’re predicting doom and gloom.

Sometimes the weather was boring, and dressing it up with doom and gloom might have boosted ratings. I don’t think it does the unwary any good when an unreality was made a possibility, probability, and then a matter of fact, for no other reason than fear becoming words. Perhaps it's just from all my years aloft, but I've learned to read all the markers in the sky. When this last system came in - it did not look comforting. The summer storms, I've learned to predict. You might get a heads-up in a monotone voice on the radio that warns of “rotational potential” in a tone that could just as easily be saying, “We’re going to have to break that bone again.” Other times it was simply “surprise!” as the sky became an angry mob of clouds. The radar usually gave you a pretty clear forewarning. But winter here was nature's crapshoot, and I learned to prepare.

This last storm, there was de-icing salt by the back steps in a pet-safe bucket, and shovels for both the front and back porch. The flashlights were set out in easy reach, the beeswax candles available in each room, and an extra blanket was out for the bed and the dog's crate, should the power go out. Night soon descended, and the snow began to fall in heavy drifts. As it did, the sounds around me changed. I couldn’t hear it within the house, but from the porch, as I let the dog down the steps to the fenced yard, the town’s main street a block away went almost silent. What few cars are still out are enveloped by the snow, their sounds muted to a few ponderous thumps as they drive over what was either a Village road repair or a trap set by Wile E. Coyote for the Roadrunner.

The freshly shoveled driveway had a patina like an old wall plastered by hand. The trees were bare but for a brace of foliage that clung on with a death grip, screaming into the wind without words, plucked with a cold hand that tosses their cries to the ground like colorful scraps of paper.

After shoveling, salting, tending to the house and the dog, I'd like to think I was Superman, but inside the house, I know there will be those reminders of things that have flown far away - three small wooden containers with dog toys or collars resting on them, my brother's favorite mug for hot drinks, photos of so many I've had to say goodbye to, and a house empty tonight but for myself and a pile of books. A good night to read something; to savor the fire that flowed from a writer’s mind through fingertips to be burnt upon the page, then doused with the water of laughter or tears and wrung out again. My mom always said there was no interrupting me when I was immersed in a book I loved. The house could burn down around me as I embraced the words even among the flames. I remember Mom saying, “She’ll love everything that hard. That will be both her blessing and her curse." My own personal kryptonite - I'm not quite sure why, standing out in temps that would cause frostbite in 20 minutes, I'm thinking that, but I couldn't help it.

I looked up before letting the dog back in. A snow-charged mass of clouds hung unbroken over Lake Michigan, darkening the sky.  By contrast, the air around the house's lights held a crystalline clarity, the sheen of a glass dome, which the merest movement of air might shatter.  Another light is seen through this starry night, a night of wonders and far-away mysteries revealed for just a moment as the clouds break, a low crevice in the glittering, ice-cold that was space; a place where the earth was just one tiny fallen leaf whose cries only God could hear.

I couldn’t help but think that I’m in some kind of cosmic snow globe, and as the porch shuddered slightly in the wind, I wonder if heaven had tilted the earth just a little to watch the flakes swirl around the lone form of one of its humble creations. I wonder if God could look down through that tiny fissure in heaven and see me down here, wearing my brother’s old coat, pulling it around me for warmth that was beyond fabric or insulation.

I squeezed the salt out of my eyes as the light disappeared. For just a moment, there was no snow, no wind at all, just a single star that sparked from the break in the clouds, like a single spark expelled from a soul's fire. A lull had come, the holding of a stormy breath, and I knew I had better get in the house now, the door now only a beggar’s prayer against the incoming cold and wind.

The warmth is but a memory, as are most treasured things, but I no longer resent or reproach it for its passing, for I hold in myself the imprint of something so rare and precious, that of the experience. For all that I have lost, I have memories of so many adventures, and God willing, more to be made.  

Back inside, I shook the snow off my boots onto the entryway rug, the warmth wrapped around me even as the wind outside began to howl. I heard a sound outside the window as the neighbors two doors down let their dog out before the worst of the storm. I heard the bark of their dog as it was released, then the shouts as it was called back in from the yard, tattered shreds and remnants of voices snatched past the ear, followed by silence. 

As water heated for tea, I picked up a book from the stack, the black cover well-worn with use, the simple title imprinted in gold.  I read as I waited for my husband to call while the dog snored happily on the couch. Just as I did as a child, I looked upwards and said thank you, for this moment, as time gathered itself back up and started ticking again. 

Today, the cold seems omnipotent, but soon there will be warmth, new life, and new memories. I can' help but think back to the words Superman said of the letter displayed on his chest - "It's not an S, on my world it means hope". 

 - Brigid

Musings from Chiberia

  "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer". - Albert Camus

Minus 32 here today with the wind chill - a good day to make soup, bake bread, and keep near the stove.  Northern Illinois has only an inch or two of snow forecast, no freezing rain or ice, for which we are grateful.  Be safe out there.  Brigid

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Chapter 53 - Things That Go Bump in the Night - From True Course - Lessons From a Life Aloft.  Independent Author Network Book of the Year Non-Fiction

An aircraft engine has as many variances of sound as a human.  There are satisfied hums, deep-throated snarls, and the incessant whine of someone who is never satisfied, no matter what you do for them.  Then, there is that sound, in and of itself, the sound of an aircraft engine over the ocean at night, when there is not enough fuel to turn back, only to go forward to a faraway shore.

The sea is a broad expanse that neither the eye nor voice can span, and when it's calm, it lulls you into a false sense of comfort as the engines hum, and you gaze out the window with a clear, unconscious eye. You are not pondering thoughts that come to you poignant and silent, the order of your conscience, the conduct of life, and if there really is a proper way to die.  You are not thinking of the operational capacities of a BKM hydraulic pump or your own limitations.  No, you are thinking about the really cold beer you will have at the end of a day and the laughter of companionship.  That is when you hear it, or think you hear it. That sound.

“Oh, that's not right,” you think, and then you hear it again, that asthmatic thump.  As you check EPRs, pressures, and temperatures, somewhere in your head are the words: “An engine-driven, two-element (centrifugal and gear) fuel pump supplies high-pressure fuel to the engine. Loss of the gear element of the fuel pump will result in a flameout.”  You feel no fear, only annoyance, at the callous outcry of machinery and cold water that have caught you unawares, making you give up your daydream of cold beer and warm skin and confirming, unreasonably, your fondness for narrow escapes.

Then it is gone if it ever occurred at all except in your mind, the engine only emitting a steady, slow hum, like somnolent bees.  But your senses are back on red alert, that seeming malfunction that the mind hears on such overwater trips, ministering to boldness as forged as its own pretense of fear. What is it to fly such a vast distance, one youngster asked me once. I replied, “It seems like five hundred minutes of boredom and one minute of stark terror.”

You either loved or hated your ship.  Aircraft, in general, are easy to fall in love with, with their ever-present potency and mysterious uncertainty.  Even as a child, I dreamed of them, watching them fly overhead, the contrails a heroic thread, the sun glinting on their promise. But they varied even within the same make and model, twins from different mothers.

Then there were the mornings when you went out to the flight line and there, on the tarmac, perched four large birds, three of them bright, shining, and gleaming, perfect in form.  And the fourth, older than the dirt upon it, with a stain of fluid on the ground underneath, the Scarlet Letter of hydraulic fluid (old airplanes didn’t leak fluid, they just marked their territory.)  Even if you got a good aircraft, there would be days they could be as unruly as a mule, refusing to start, to move, and occasionally willing to give you a swift kick.  It is sometimes the smallest of things that can be your undoing.

But it's not just your own craft turning on you that you have to be concerned about on such trips.  The weather over the ocean is its own continent.  Perhaps not so much now, but twenty-five years ago, when I was a pup with four stripes on my delicate shoulders that were not yet tarnished, weather planning for ocean crossing was less meteorology and more alchemy. I think about many long flights, our course drawn out with paper, not electronic blips of a satellite fix, a small x marking a fuel stop, a small cross marking our destination, a line marking the path—where we as pilgrims sought out that holy place, that grail of a full night's sleep.

I remember one flight that would have a stop on an island, a piece of land in the middle of an ocean, just big enough for a tourist's fat wallet and the occasional aircraft.  There was a great oceanic storm brewing off in the distance, but it was to have no impact on our flight path, according to all of the aviation weather experts.  Still, as the craft pitched ponderously in the air that was to have been still, even if the sky was clear, there was this nagging tickle at the back of my neck that said: “should have stayed in bed.”  As we passed the calculated point of go on or retreat back to the mainland, the controllers telling us it looked good ahead, the clouds began to build and form, not so huddled we couldn't easily pick our way through them with the right tilt of an antenna, but building nonetheless, and rapidly.

As we got within fifty miles of our destination, the clouds built themselves into 

full-blown thunderstorms, releasing their energy in broken bursts that boomed like the barrage of heavy artillery firing at a very small enemy. The air was full of flying water, heavy sheets of rain that extended well past the individual cells, landmines with updrafts and downdrafts I was trying to avoid.  It was supposed to be clear and sunny, with no alternate landing site required; our biggest concern was what food we could get before taking off again.

My copilot was very young and relatively inexperienced, not with the craft, as he was fully trained, but to this whole oceanic environment.  I could sense him getting pretty nervous.  I just smiled and said, “We're almost there.” There is no quitting in this sort of thing, and often there is no going back. You endure because you have a conviction in the truth of what you are doing.  Duty was not just a thing, but a name, that establishes the order, the mortality of conduct and the outcome.

“Skipper?” a gentle voice from my right.

We checked the weather for our landing destination. The wind was very heavy but not beyond the limits of my skill or the aircraft's proven handling, but it was going to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.  What concerned me more was the torrential rain, barely enough ceiling and visibility to land, “barely” being optimistic, but enough to make the precision instrument approach and hopefully see the required lighting. There were no other options when the nearest bit of land is hours past the fuel you have.

My copilot, upon hearing the terminal weather, gently stammered, “What are we going to do?”

We were either going to succeed, or we were going to be scorched by a flame that fate would flick at us without pity, with no time to utter any last words of faith or regret.  But I wasn't going to tell him that.

I gave him my sweetest smile and said simply:

 “We're going to land.”

And we did, dropping our nose and descending down into that somber wall of rain and gray that seemed the very stronghold of that small place we were trying to breach, picking up the runway there through the rain at the very last moment, the wind pounding us like surf. When we landed, my copilot wanted to kiss the ground. I simply gave my aircraft a grateful pat on the nose, like the trusty steed it was, as it stood there, trembling in the wind as if it had just run a great race.

I'd never quite seen weather change so violently and rapidly outside of the forecast. Apparently, Mr. “Giant Rotation of Water and Air” took a sharp bend in the hours we were aloft, pushing some weather up our way.  Not yet hurricane strength by any means, just the nasty stuff you generally try to avoid.

After that, I think I was owed my five hundred minutes of boredom and just wanted to go perch on a bar stool somewhere dry.

There have been many other storms, ones with premeditated gales of wind that seemed to have a fierce purpose all of their own—such a furious attentiveness in the howl and rush of air that it seemed to personally seek us out. But that did not summon in me a feeling of fear, but rather, a deep sense of awe in the power of our planet, though I was tempted to say a quick prayer to the Patron Saint of ailerons and rudder, if indeed, there was one.

There were days we left the ramp to launch into that deep sea that is the sky, no one to see us off, as in days of old, where the ships left port while some quiet mothers and anxious maidens cried and waved lace handkerchiefs as they dreamed undrowned dreams. We were on the move so much, most of us had no time for such ties, and our connections were brief sparks from cold stone, unexpected and as short-lived. For now, at least, we just had our crew and crew chief, who, while immensely competent, usually ate tacks for breakfast and was typically as excited to see us arrive as my house cat was when I came home.

There were days of fierce delights, of sunlight that bounced off the nose, like some weaponized ray of an alien craft, its power deflected by mere sheet metal, and more relays that anyone knew (seriously, when they built this craft, SOMEONE was having a sale on relays.) There were nights we hung motionless in the air, with no sense of motion, ourselves a futuristic craft that flew beyond a brace of suns into the darkness, awaiting the kiss of imminent adventures.

It was also long and hard work.  It was machinery that would break in a place of isolation requiring repairs, with a manual you wished you had brought with you, which was like trying to explain the order of the universe with one brief, hazy glimpse of truth. It was heat and cold, pain, and pressure. It was learning to trust equally providence and the immutable laws of physics.  But its reward was great.

I understood the conjured diplomacy of the relationship between earth and sky, alive to its looming dangers and measured mercies.  I bore the power of the atmosphere and the criticism of others, the levy of duty, and the common severity of the tasks that build a backbone and enable you to break bread.  It's a life that will check the edge of your temper and the point of your command; that will affirm the character of your fight and the hidden truth of your fears. It's a life that beguiles as it disenchants, a life that frees you even as you willingly let it enslave you.

Our world was long drawn-out days, a future that disappeared moment by moment into history, and days that fell forever into the arms of the sea or drifted down upon deserts or mountains where they caught and hung on the landscape like clouds. Our world was one aircraft that fired up with a belch of smoke, then hung there, lonely under that smoke, till we were released with a quick salute.

It was an orderly world that revolved around a specific, precise, and measured way of doing something, while working in an environment that cared little about either precision or order.  You were trained in every possible outcome, only to find that one circumstance that wasn't like you were trained for.  Then you discover the most unyielding of haunts of man's own nature, wrapped up in a question like rolled steel, more chilling than your brief mortality.  And that is the distrust of the absolute power consecrated in an established standard of conduct. You can go off the path, right? Boldly go where no man has gone before.  It works out in the movies, doesn't it? Then, in that instant between heroism and insanity, you realize what you are made of, for the only thing that will save you is that trust, and you take off your cowboy hat, get out that checklist, and do what is expected of you.

I don't miss it, and I do, there on those nights, when the golden blaze of sunset bites into the rim of the earth and the night casts its shadow upon me.  On such nights, I see the form of an aircraft overhead, not the modern airliner, but a craft that's seen some battles, one with ancient radios and tired rigging, visible there in the last remnant of light.  I don't see them often, but when I do, I simply stand there in that slant of light, the form moving away to the heart of a sky that is its own vast enigma. Only the moon now watches me, hanging in the sky like a slender shaving of pale wood. I watch that aircraft until it's only a flash of a strobe, one that captures all that last bit of light in the sky, disappearing into the darkness, gone, even as it's forever contained in the center of it.

The sky is an incomplete story and for that I am grateful. -  L.B. "Brigid" Johnson

Letting the Music Out

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.  I've heard that old saying a hundred times, often when trying to train an old dog as our home has been home to 2 senior rescues since we lost Barkley.

It's not so much that being older makes one less able to learn, short of cognitive issues.  It's just that we get used to a certain way of doing things and don't wish to change.  My teenage grandchildren would be mortified to know I still have a flip phone.  It's not that I can't use a smartphone; the cockpit of an A-320 makes a phone's technology look like something Fisher Price built.  But this brick of a phone has survived being kicked, dropped in a puddle, run over by a bike, mawed by a medley of dog teeth, and it just keeps working and has done so for less than $50 plus the monthly fee to keep it connected.  It has "the ringing app," the only one I really need, as when the desk computer shuts down, I wish no further electronic leash to the world.

But I notice now that I'm retired, I do tend to get into a routine.  Up before 7 each day, the dog out for some exercise with me, coffee and a bowl of hot cereal (the pancake breakfasts are for Saturdays, the rest of the time it's "Honey Bunches of Gruel").  Then, outside of the volunteer work I do 3 days a week and the occasional consult for someone in a suit who will pay big $$ to pick my brain to prep for a trial, my time is my own. 

But am I going to take up knitting, put my feet up, and watch my hair go grey? (Something that my hair so far seems reluctant to do, red hair apparently being as stubborn as the rest of me?)  No.

I couldn't do that at 30; I'm definitely not going to do it now. No, I will leave my comfortable chair and head out, as inconsequential a move as a bird leaving a trusted branch.  Something just draws me out of my solitude, a whisper, the sound of a train, the wind in the trees, and I'm heading out, be it on foot or wheels.  Just as it was when I was working, I'm constantly looking all around me, noting the people rushing about, their eyes disregarding the sun, their shadows unaware of the branches that wave over them, chattering with the tweets and calls of life.  Rushing about until the days are gone until that last one, where all the words of hope and defiance, of great joy and great risks, which take wing so easily into the free immensity of a living sky, fall wearily into that newly dug grave.

Then I will go home and make some music because that special intensity of existence we think is reserved for the young is calling.  For you see, long after my "youth" was gone, I went out and bought a violin.

I was always good on the piano and the clarinet, but as far as the violin was concerned, I had the musical gift of a dyslexic tree sloth, but I tried. My fingers were a bit stiff, but the music was still in me, even if only Barkley was around to be the music critic. 

Oh, please tell me you're going to just set fire to it.

The first step is always the hardest. Trying something new. Embracing something long forgotten that, at one time, you loved. Learning to do something you've never done but wanted to. Tiny leaps upward propelled by longing and only held back by the gravity of timidity.

It's not much different than taking that first solo in an airplane. You have been given the tools, you have the capabilities. But it's the fear of what you don't know that holds you back, while upward, a huge unknown, the sky, beckons. You've learned through your experience, through your lessons, that the sky is sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes frightening, never the same two days in a row, almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its quiet, and almost divine in its vastness. And you're just a little afraid of it at this point.---But it calls to you, and you know you are going to go forward. It's time.

I still remember the day I walked into that little family-owned music store - so many instruments of beauty, of power, love, lust, longing, faith, joy; so many ways to paint a picture on the silence of your life. So, after holding, feeling, and touching, I picked one. I had never played. I left, happily clutching the case and the name of a local teacher, the echo of the music from the store trailing like a contrail in the twilight sky. Did it go well?  I had expected, with a few lessons, to experience the joy as the music soared and spun, caught a breeze, then soared out into the night on a perfumed breeze. Actually, it was more the sound of someone strangling a set of bagpipes, but I didn't give up.

One is never too old to learn. One is never too ingrained in their habits to take up the instrument that, for them, will be the perfect blend of the joyous with the sublime, hands stroking a thing of beauty as it resonates with the sound of their dreams, the lingering notes of their need. Being married to someone who was a musical prodigy isn't going to stop me (he can't fly a jet OR make croissants), and it might be a pipe dream that I learn to play this thing well enough to play in public.  But I'm not going to ignore a desire because I feel that I'm too fixed in the routine of my life. So, be it an instrument, a new physical skill or endeavor, or simply learning to craft something with your hands, try it. And may the music of your longings fill up those quiet spaces within, as you curl up between the notes and breathe deep the dreams that are in all of us.

I'll never be 20 again. I can't bench press what I used to, run as far, or put on a pair of socks without dislocating a hip when the floor is really cold.  But my will is as strong and straight as the road to Glory, and that is something learned only by the years, even if you can't rewind them like a tape. The Roman Poet Ovid said, All things change, nothing is extinguished, everything flows onward. Learning new music would pull me onward, forward, calming me, soothing my mind, giving it rest, becoming the soundtrack of my life.

If I could have put some of my aerial adventures to music, what a song that would have been. Flying can be as mathematically precise as Bach, as fluid as Chopin, and as restful as Brahms. I've had landings that were as lyrical as Vivaldi, and I've had some that should have been set to the theme from Loony Tunes. There were days when there was no sense of motion, my craft seeming to hang upon the high, clear sky in a tranquil paradox of time and motion, held on the air like a sustained note. There were days in which storms crashed around me, a kettle drum rumble of thunder warning me away, ice pellets striking the windshield with the ringing truth of a bell.  It would have been my loss had I not experienced both, but it would have been, had I listened to those who said: “You shouldn't do that.”

Both brought me things worth every risk. Both induced in me a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of that which is unseen. Music and flying are both wonders or can be. What is a wonder to me may not be a wonder to you, but you may understand it, the passion, the yearning for something that's only yet a taste, the visceral connection between the soul and what elevates it to the heavens. It is what strikes in you, that same chord, the same spark that is embedded in some hearts. It is something that, in certain individuals, is simply part of our most basic inability to live with the lonesome gravity of silence.

Today, the house is empty, with the weather unseasonably warm for January. Perhaps I'll crack open the windows and let the music out. - Brigid

The Scone Ranger

The Quitter (1912) When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child, And Death looks you bang in the eye, And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle To cock your revolver and . . . die. But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can," And self-dissolution is barred. In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . . It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard. "You're sick of the game!" Well, now that's a shame. You're young and you're brave and you're bright. "You've had a raw deal!" I know--but don't squeal, Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight. It's the plugging away that will win you the day, So don't be a piker, old pard! Just draw on your grit, it's so easy to quit. It's the keeping-your chin-up that's hard. It's easy to cry that you're beaten--and die; It's easy to crawfish and crawl; But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight-- Why that's the best game of them all! And though you come out of each gruelling bout, All broken and battered and scarred, Just have one more try--it's dead easy to die, It's the keeping-on-living that's hard. - Robert Service

Good words to live by. Keep your revolver in good repair, keep on living, and freshly baked Scones in the morning with homemade blackberry jam. It's much preferred over "hell served for breakfast".

- Brigid 

Tattered Flags

After some unforecast snow overnight, the walk with the dog was quiet.  Down the street, a Village vehicle, someone marking gas lines as part of some upcoming work, based on the detailed markings, likely a needed excavation.  They'd been doing a lot of that in the last few months, so it wasn't a surprise.

What WAS a surprise was that the technician was spray painting the colored markings for the gas line work ON THE SNOW, which was already melting.

Yes, every Village has an idiot.  We just have more than one.

When did common sense go out the window?  Is it something I just noticed once I got to the "Get Off my Lawn" age, when it's so easy to forget the dreams and illusions of youth in the cynicism that creeps in as we pass 60?   I was reading a fairy tale to my youngest grandchild once, and I suddenly thought, "Look, A pumpkin turns into a fully-outfitted, gilded coach, and Cinderella just blindly gets in it and rides away.  Who in their right mind would DO that?  Apparently, Cinderella did and found her Prince and a happy ever after. The rest of us?  We usually get a sharp dose of reality and glass slippers that REALLY hurt to wear.  

Some of what might be considered common sense is innate intelligence, and that's all relative.  I always thought I was pretty clever, then one day I went to the U of Pennsylvania, where my former father-in-law, a robotics pioneer, was professor of computer information science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. In his lab, there was a robotic arm that would play ping pong with you and win.  It was built by a freshman.  At that moment, I felt incredibly stupid. I muttered "beer, donut" and quietly left to liberally sprinkle some chicken and myself with some white wine as I made dinner with my mother-in-law.

Some of my aerial adventures certainly decry any semblance of good sense.  But even on my worst day, I didn't imagine some of the things I encountered over the course of my later career in the aviation equivalent of "hold my beer".  Most survived, and with a legal slap on the wrist or just a stern talking-to, never did such things again.  But there were just some fools who seemed to dare us to come out to be the witnesses and guarantors of the outcome of the very act we spent so much time trying to prevent. But some just didn't listen or learn, and the day inevitably came when I ended up at a front door. I know I'm supposed to start with “I'm sorry for your loss,” but I couldn't. I merely stood there as someone who had just aged before my eyes, grabbed onto me like a lifeline, breaking into tears. I remember one woman on a small drought-ravaged farm.  She couldn't have been much more than a hundred pounds and felt like a bundle of sticks against my muscled form as she cried, sticks that had weathered so much for many years, only to be tossed upon a fire, for which I could offer no healing rain. You don't forget that.

Somewhere in the Good Book it says know thyself, and though my interpretation of that was likely well out of context, I learned early on about limitations and tried not to exceed them, or red line.  Looking in the mirror this morning, I note the scar where I got whacked hard by the bungee cord of a CF700 engine cover standing out in relief on alabaster skin that shows every worry, every tear.  I realize that I, too, made mistakes that changed a life, often mine, in ways other than good, and that it was only through fate, luck, or a God who factored in my own stupidity when putting a calling on my life, that I am still here.

I do understand the lure of doing something without really thinking it through. As a child, I once used my dad's soldering gun to try to give Barbie a tattoo (to impress GI Joe), only to melt her whole arm off.  Another Barbie lost her leg being launched in a potato gun across the fence.  Then there was the time my brother got me to eat a dog treat shaped like a Hershey's kiss. When I bit into it and made a face, he said, "It's a dog treat, it's made out of sawdust and cow poop."  (Not true, VITAMIN FORTIFIED sawdust and cow poop).  Of course, I ran crying to my mother, who simply said, "If you're stupid enough to do something just because your brother tells you, don't come to me for sympathy."

I didn't learn immediately; there was something about the unknown, the unexplored, the "what if?" in life. I was the kid that even though I got straight A's, fidgeted in class, couldn't sit still, looking at the whole "classroom" aspect of life as a waste of time which drove me half-consciously, out into the world as soon as that bell rang away from a comfortable berth, from the menace of the mundane, to the wonders of a world beyond walls.  Even as a child, I understood the ancient human instinct of the chase, and I rushed out to claim what I thought was lacking in my structured upbringing: wisdom to acquire, adventures to behold, and fun to have.  

Which again was quickly quashed by my mom, who was a former Deputy Sheriff for Multnomah County in Oregon.  She had seen too many ways to end up in a body bag and passed on some of that wisdom.   The lessons took; I attempted to daydream less and listen more, and later in life, as airmen say, to keep the pointy end forward and the rubber side down.   

Like my mom, I later learned the ramifications of physics too well. I'd like to say I retired without ever having to burn my clothes at the end of the workday, but I can't.  I'd also like to think I could take in all that the world dished out at me like a trooper, but I can't.  Sometimes late in the night, I'll wake from a dream, one I have often of an actual event, a crash where the aircraft broke apart as it hit trees and terrain, a fireball erupting from a fuel tank.  Two were killed immediately, but another onboard wasn't at the scene.  A grid was walked; there were footsteps in the snow and pieces of soot and burned fabric.  The body was surprisingly far from the wreckage. He'd run clear, then walked, then crawled, already dead, just not realizing it yet as he strove to flee.  I stood there and cried so hard that I had to don new PPE.  It's an image I will take to my grave. 

I wake up today to my mortality in a world that's full of those still wandering in happy denial.  I can't change them; I can only change myself.  I gave up alcohol years ago, I eat extra veggies and apparently when I was a kid and said, "I can't wait to grow up so I can stay up as late as I want", as late as I want apparently is 9:30.  I can't undo past excesses, poor choices (never order the seafood at that restaurant in the terminal with little foot traffic at SFO International), and questionable taste in automobiles (seriously, I owned a Dodge Shadow??)  But I can live with where it brought me.  Moments of the loss of sense or self are nothing more than fate's little footnote, already fading, a scent, the sound of a voice, a flower pressed between pages, never to be opened again.  Those regrets don't drive my day; they are a shade, a shadow, a whispered warning, perhaps, but a quiet one.

Outside, there is snow. I'm going to go out in footwear that is not suitable, fueled by a bowl of Frosted Flakes and too much caffeine, and seize the day.  I have my lessons, years of patience, and extreme care that got me through broken clouds, turbulent air, and unforecast change, where the senses of my command brought me out to safety. How slow had been those flights of passage, and how quickly they were over.  

So, for today, I'm just going to explore, laugh, and wonder in the world. The snow is melting, and the laundry will hold. For what is one day? A short space before the light too soon, and the echo of an owl's wings brushes against the windowsill. Just a brief interlude in the sun's dance. 

My past may have brought high winds, bent trees, and fire; a helter-skelter of responsibility, fear, danger, and the occasional fractured heart.  Such is what I did, and such is what I am. But for today, I'll embrace what comes my way: the trees, a refuge of familiar order; the few remaining leaves; a brace of tattered flags against ancient wood, not knowing yet that they are dead.

I watch as a leaf flutters down from above, resting on the ground immobile, stilled forever, as it were, until the breeze picks it up and spins it aloft towards the sun which breaches the perimeter.  For now, I have the light, some of the sense my mom instilled in me, and a snowball the size of a small planet in my hand, just waiting for my husband to leave the house.    

A new day awaits.