Taking Flight (6 page)

Mom and I walked slowly until there was no more space to cross. Grandma was perched rigidly on the edge of the couch, tapping her white Keds sneaker on the carpet. When she saw us she made a noise like a baby whimpering in its sleep. “Oh, Sarah, Jan. Sarah. My baby, my poor, poor baby.” She raised her hand over her mouth. I crossed the distance between us and knelt down on the floor, leaning into her arm. Mom sat next to her on the couch.

I don’t know how long we stayed there, three generations of women who loved you in every way possible. Wife, mother, child, all drowning in the storm of grief.

Building an airplane requires the use of some truly disgusting chemicals. Glues, paints, shelacks, spit, tears, blood – most of these cocktails come with warning labels that would frighten away the eco-friendly trendsetters of the present day. The labels advised us to avoid exposing infants or pregnant women to the contents of the Norton family basement, and, if possible, to don a hazmat suit before popping open a single canister.

Of all the chemicals Dad used, the most potent, the most painful on the nervous system was varnish.

Most of the time Dad was kind enough to warn us of what was about to happen. We would hear his footsteps coming up from his workshop in the basement moments before the door would fly open. He would appear with an evil grin on his crazed face. “It’s t-i-i-i-me. Get ready, because today we get to VARNISH!”

Lucky for Mom, varnishing the latest piece of airplane Dad had created was a two-person effort. Mom had the common sense to wear gloves, long sleeves and a face mask. Dad, who was arguably a smart guy, approached varnishing with a recklessness that ultimately burnt off all the hair on his arms and hands.

Because Mom and I existed to purely to amuse my father, occasionally he would “forget” to tell us that he was getting ready to varnish. The chemicals had probably caused permanent damage; I doubted he even noticed the pungent fumes after his fourth or fifth project.

There were Saturdays when it didn’t look like Dad was going to do any work at all on his plane. Frustration got the better of him every now and again and he would resign himself to taking a break. Mom and I would leave to go run errands while Dad looked content on the couch, his eyes half shut, History channel playing softly. We were certain he would be in the middle of a REM cycle when we got back.

We were wrong.

We could smell the air changing from the moment we pulled our car into the garage. Our eyes would already be watering when we opened the door to the house. It felt like inhaling fire. Gasping, coughing, we would curse him and his damn plane. While Dad usually remembered to open the windows in the basement he didn’t bother with the multiple windows on the main level of the house. The smell of varnish was comparable to cigarette smoke in its resiliency, permeating the couch cushions, the carpet, sometimes even soaking into the clothes in my bedroom closet.

The varnish and glue and God knows what else he used left stains everywhere it splattered. Our basement floor was covered in thick caramel colored markings that couldn’t be removed with anything less than a chisel. Our garage didn’t fare much better after the plane took residency there. Dad and his plane left an autograph wherever they went.

During the week Dad worked in a nine-to-five suit and tie world. He didn’t talk much about his job – his real life and the things that mattered to him couldn’t be found in a paycheck or a corner office.  Every evening when he came home from work he would scratch the dog behind the ears, then we would wave at each other as he walked through the living room to the kitchen where Mom was getting dinner going. The two of them would head upstairs to their room where they would shut their door for fifteen minutes or so. My parents kept the household technicalities, like discussing bills or repairs, separate from my childhood.

When they returned Dad would be out of his suit and wearing one of the ten casual outfits he owned, leaving Mr. Norton behind for the night.

He frequently wore blue jeans, his Oshkosh hat, and his chunky red, white and blue sweatshirt. He would wear that sweatshirt several times a week in the fall and winter. It took quite a beating over the years. Chemicals and sawdust melted into the fabric and never came out, no matter how many times Mom washed it. Whenever I see commercials for laundry detergent boasting their prowess against grass stains I can’t help but roll my eyes. Until they show an ad where they get varnish out of clothes I won’t be impressed. 

Mom eventually gave up trying to replenish Dad’s casual wardrobe. Everything ended up stained. She never tried to clean the basement floor or the garage. We accepted the stains and the smell as part of our lives, unpleasant yet predictable, like a leaky faucet or a drafty window. You can’t skip the tricky parts of life, the ones that burn and test your dedication; but if you’re lucky, there will be people around to open the windows for you when you need fresh air the most.

When people met my Dad his serious face and introverted personality could mislead them into thinking David Norton was a cranky, angry man. I inherited many of his facial features and I am often asked what I am so mad about when, in fact, I’m having a wonderful day.

Being a shy individual meant Dad listened intently. He would sit on the sidelines of a group of people, observing, soaking in the details of a conversation, and then nail the crowd with a one line quip that would have everyone doubled over in laughter. He didn’t curse often, which meant when he did drop a bad word it was all the more entertaining. He may have been quiet, but that didn’t inhibit him from performing a smart-ass comedy routine on a regular basis. No one was safe from my Dad when the mood struck him – not even our dog.

One night my parents and I were settling in to watch a movie after dinner. We had bought candy bars for dessert and they were waiting for us on the coffee table. Our dog, Smokey, had given up hope for getting any table scraps during dinner, and so positioned himself at the edge of the table, his nose pressed to the wrapper of Dad’s Mars bar. Mom and I ate our candy almost immediately after our movie began, but Dad waited, curious how long the dog could stand the temptation.

A half an hour passed and Smokey was showing no signs of defeat. “Would you stop that, David? If you’re not going to eat it then put it up high, leave the dog alone,” Mom scolded, feeling sorry for her pal. Dad had agreed to us getting a dog under the condition that the dog be named Smokey. His hope was that anytime Mom scolded the dog – “No, Smokey!” – she would be reminded that she promised to quit smoking. Mom still lit up several times throughout the day, and I think her failure to quit motivated Dad to pick on her dog at any opportunity.

Without a word, Dad stood up and grabbed the Mars bar. He walked across the living room to where the frames of the bathroom and the hallway doors to the garage almost touched in a corner. He stretched his hand up over his head, carefully balancing the Mars bar on the wood frame. When he was sure the candy wouldn’t fall, he returned to his spot on the couch.

Mom stared at him, trying her best to stifle a laugh. “I have to ask. Why did you put a candy bar on the door frame?”

Dad shrugged. “You said to put it up somewhere high. Seems like a good, high spot to me.”

The Mars bar remained out of reach for years. After Smokey gave up hope of ever claiming his prize my younger cousin, Steven, tried to convince my Dad to let him have it. Steven would stand on his tiptoes and stare longingly at the treat. “Can’t I have it, Uncle David?” he would ask.

“Tell you what. You can have it” – he would tap Steven on the head – “when you can reach it. Deal?” 

Years later, when Steven had grown into a tall young man, he couldn’t bring himself to take it down. The Mars bar became an iconic point of interest
when
we gave grand tours of our house. We didn’t have a lot of nice things, but we had a candy bar on the ceiling and a plane in the basement. These things tended to make first impressions of my Dad a little more accurate – I mean, how scary can someone be if they put a candy bar above their bathroom door?

Dad’s wit was calculated and well executed, and often involved a practical joke.  Everyone near and dear to Dad was on the receiving end of a prank at one point or another.

Dad’s best friend, Chuck, was probably the biggest target. Dad and Chuck were roommates in their bachelor days. Dad had the brilliant idea to sneak into the bathroom whenever Chuck was showering and switch the clean underwear he had waiting for him on the counter with the dirty pair he had just taken off and left on the floor. This went on for weeks until Chuck finally started to smell himself. When he asked my Dad if he noticed any funky smells, Dad cracked up, not caring that his prank had cost Chuck a date with a pretty girl.

Whenever Dad told the underwear switcheroo story he would interrupt himself at the crucial moment of discovery, unable to control his deep belly laughs. Those laughs were infectious; even if you were angry with him, even if you had been the target of his most recent prank, you just had to laugh along with him. The stories always ended with Dad and his audience wiping tears from their eyes.

If you were part of the immediate family you had no hope of escaping Dad’s pranks. There is a videotape of my cousin Steven, his brother Robert and myself sleeping peacefully on our living room floor. Mom is holding the camera while Dad is spraying shaving cream on our cheeks and foreheads. Dad snorts from time to time as he tries to hold in his laughter. One by one he tickles our faces and eventually we stir awake, not from the cream smeared across our eyes and noses but because Dad couldn’t stay quiet anymore.

When my Grandpa was weeks away from death, his cancer had spread into his throat and taken away his ability to speak. He would sit like a ghost in his recliner and watch with wide, weepy eyes as we lived around him. Grandpa never said, “I love you”, but you knew he did, because every time one of us grandkids walked by he would use what little strength he had to try and trip us with his cane.

Tormenting us with varnish, shaving cream, dirty underwear – these were Dad’s ways of tripping us up. As annoying as he could be, I know he wouldn’t have bothered if he hadn’t loved us so much.

When summer came to Minnesota my family would bring the plane out of the basement to spend a day assembled in our backyard. My parents would pop out the basement window and screen and then Dad would feed Mom whatever parts of the plane he had finished over the previous year. Piece by piece his years work would take shape in our backyard, propped up on sawhorses and lawn chairs. While we worked our neighbors would appear on their decks, sipping their morning coffee, not shy about gawking at our annual ritual.

In the beginning it was hard for me to make sense of what came out of the basement. The naked slabs of wood just looked like...well, wood. Once everything had been secured on sawhorses Dad would shift the pieces around, take notes, remove his hat and wipe sweat from his brow, then move the pieces around again. He obviously saw something we didn’t, or maybe he didn’t see a thing and he meant it every time he threatened to take an axe to his work. 

As the summers passed and the fuselage grew I began to see a plane. The VP-1 was a single seat-er, which meant Dad would be the only passenger. It reminded me of a rectangular kayak. He would climb in the seat and his legs would rest inside the nose.

The wings were the most impressive feature in their skeletal state. Before they were encased in fiberglass, row after row of the paper thin wood that had been delicately cut into intricate circles were visible; this was where the nerves of the plane would be fed. The circles were precisely measured and cut with no room for error. More than once I heard Dad curse, followed by the sound of snapping wood. A sixteenth of an inch could be the difference between success and failure, and if he thought his work wasn’t perfect he would destroy it.

The plane was like a baby in our family, the sibling I never had but always wished for. Just like a child that you see everyday, it can be easy to miss the subtle way that the child is changing. It takes an out of town relative to come for a visit and exclaim how much the baby has grown before you step back and see for yourself that progress is happening. The same was true with the plane. It wasn’t until we brought everything out into the backyard that we would all see how much had been done in a year.

Some families take pictures for their Christmas cards in front of trees bursting with fall colors or with Mickey Mouse on a trip to Disney World. Not us. We took pictures beside the plane in the back yard. After the pieces were assembled, we took turns posing individually with the plane, then my parents together, then me with each of my parents. We would ask one of my friends or our neighbors to take the family photo. Jan, David, Sarah and the airplane (which Dad frequently referred to as ‘The Little S.O.B.’), completed our happy family. 

I grew up alongside Dad’s plane; from age ten to sixteen those annual pictures show both of our awkward stages, including but not limited to bad haircuts, skin malfunctions, missing pieces, gangly limbs. I often teased Dad that the plane was the favorite child in the family. We kept pictures of the plane on the coffee table instead of family photo albums.

Mom explained to me once that the airplane wasn’t more important than me but that, perhaps, it was as important. “You’re not going to be a kid forever. When you’re gone, living your own life, Dad will need something to keep him busy,” she would say, reminding me that like the plane, I too was growing up.