Taking Flight (8 page)

I suppose you never know what you will be getting from your spouse after the years begin to pass. I doubt Mom knew that Dad would dedicate six years of his life, of their lives, to building an airplane. Did she ever expect that Dad would take over their house, their time, and their finances to create an airplane?

Once Dad began to build his plane, my parents’ lives revolved around the needs of the plane. Mom was a woman who believed completely in her husband and the importance of seeing his dream to fruition. I think that as Mom saw how large of a project Dad was taking on she realized she had two choices: do just enough to get by and get it done, or dive right in and become an expert in all things related to experimental aircrafts. I hope that Dad remembered, in all his stress and frustration, to tell her thank you. A million times still wouldn’t be enough for how much she did for him and his plane. I bet there are many experimental aircrafts that are flying right now that exist largely because the pilot was lucky enough to have a loving, supportive spouse.

There were many times while Dad was working when he wanted to quit. Flying might be great fun, but building an airplane, according to Dad, “is a bitch!” Every time Dad hit a bump in the road his doom-and-gloom persona would kick in, and he would pout and stomp his feet, convinced it was time to quit. Mom knew just how to calm him down or distract him. Once he was out of his own way she would take on the job of calling specialty wood sellers, looking for the Douglas Fir two-by-fours that his blueprints called for. Or she would drive to seven different hardware stores to buy a specific sized bolt that Dad was convinced he would never get his hands on. Some days she just had to bring Dad China Pagoda take out and a cold Pepsi to get him back on track. Whatever Dad needed, Mom was there.

My mother has alluded to other methods of motivation and distraction that happened in that basement while I played obliviously upstairs. While I would rather not think about it, I would be more disturbed if my parents hadn’t been sneaking around like teenagers. At least I think I would be.

Throughout the building process, Mom learned that aviation hadn’t quite caught up with the women’s movement – the aviation industry was dominated by men. Men who worked for companies who in turn had access to the companies who sold all the random, intricate, hard to find (in a world before Google and Amazon) pieces required to build a plane. As if being a woman wasn’t set back enough, when Mom did manage to get a rep on the phone she was repeatedly told that these companies wouldn’t deal with a private buyer.

My Mom is a stubborn, enthusiastic woman. She likes a challenge, and the airplane became just as much her project as it was Dad’s. Mom was playing on our computer one night when she happened upon a template for designing business cards. Computers had just begun to infiltrate American households in the late 90’s, and Mom was still trying to figure out how to get the mouse to move where she wanted it to go. I don’t know how long she played with that template, but a few days later she came out of Kinko’s with a box of business cards. Norton Aviation was born, and Jan Norton was listed as parts manager. She even designed a tiny black plane in the upper right corner. She was ready to play with the big boys.

As Parts Manager, Jan Norton had doors opened for her left and right. Whatever she wanted, she was able to order. A phone call for fiberglass or sheet metal and in a couple minutes a purchase order would be put together. Sometimes I would go with Mom to pick up the parts, and I would watch from the car as my five-foot-one mother would saunter up to the shipping dock to sign the receipt. She gladly gave the confused looking man helping her one of her business cards. “Don’t these idiots know I’m the same person who they wouldn’t sell to a month ago?” she would say when she got back in the car, trophy in hand. Mom was Pretty Woman, finally shopping in the elite hardware stores of Southwestern Minnesota.

I guess I should tell you about how bad things got, for Mom and I. I don’t know if you’re shielded from this kind of stuff in Heaven, or wherever you are now, but I think it’s fair that you know this. Because as much as I love you, you need to know that your dream had a price.

Mom and I were left to pick up the check.

Mom didn’t change the sheets on your bed until the day I told her I couldn’t stand the pungent smell coming from your bedroom any longer. We peeled the sheets off the bed together, and when they were clean the smell was gone and so was Mom.

Do you remember how Mom would cook dinner every night? Remember how she wore jeans and sweatshirts with puff painted snowmen in the wintertime? Remember how Mom always had a book on the arm of the couch, one at the kitchen table and one on her nightstand?

Remember how she used to be able to look at me without feeling sad?

She changed slowly and somehow all at once. For a long time I equated a missed phone call or someone running five minutes late with death. (Actually, I still do this sometimes. I have found myself bracing for the worst when Dustin is five minutes late coming home from work.) Imagine the weeknight that Mom went out with Jim and Diane and didn’t answer her cell phone or return home until four in the morning. I sat in our living room with all the lights on, my knees pulled up to my chest, breathing through each terrible scenario my imagination treated me to. When she finally came in we got into our first of many, many fights. It ended when she slapped me across the face.

I slapped her back.

We stood facing each other, our anger so palpable that the dog had run upstairs to escape from the tension.

It wasn’t the last time we raised our hands to one another. 

Mom went back to work in September 2000, where she worked sixty hour weeks. She stopped cooking dinner, though on rare nights I could get her to cook her infamous spaghetti.  I savored those meals, watching her stand at the stove stirring a pot of noodles. She would always cut up mine in a bowl, long after I was old enough to know how to twirl the pasta onto a fork. I would eat slowly, because as long as we each had our spaghetti, our garlic bread, our mutual need for chocolate following the consumption of marinara sauce, we could almost be ok.

Our three level, three bedroom house was too big for the two of us. Mom didn’t care about the house any more, but she got so angry if it was messy. The thing was, it wasn’t being lived in, and so it was never messy. But she saw dirt and smudges and filth everywhere. She hated being there but suddenly everything that we owned was something you worked so hard to give us, and since we weren’t getting anything else from you ever again, the house became a shrine. I got into the habit of coming home from school and scrubbing clean a kitchen that had been cleaned the day before, and the day before that, though nothing had been cooked to leave a mess that needed cleaning.

But no matter how much I cleaned, when Mom came home, exhausted from work and the stress of everything that must have been weighing on her shoulders, she would survey the kitchen and then yell at me. “You have been home for three hours and you couldn’t look around and take care of this mess?” She would grab the paper towels and Windex. “I can’t do everything on my own.” Then she would wipe down the counters I had already washed.

Dirt, even invisible dirt, was easier to manage than grief.

Insomnia joined me in my bedroom, nagging me to stay awake, to think about you, to listen for Mom’s return on the nights she went out. Once I decided to stop fighting it I could convince myself I wasn’t tired anymore; adrenaline coursed through me on a constant drip. I started to stay awake for days on end.

As summer ended and the first day of school approached I knew I needed to get back into a routine, including sleep. I found a bottle of Tylenol P.M. and started taking them, one after another. I wanted only to sleep, but I wouldn’t have put up much of a fight against death. I spent the next two days with a sick stomach and a wicked headache, my ears ringing constantly. Mom never knew. How could she notice that I was weak and sick? Mom couldn’t stand to be around me for any length of time, looking at me hurt her too much. 

When my junior year of high school began it wasn’t too long before I began sleeping in class. Only I wasn’t really sleeping. I would be listening to the teacher and then everything around me would fade in and out, the chalkboard replaced with a field I had never seen. Your plane was going up in front of me, and I would reach out to stop you. The sounds of my own screams brought me back to the present.

Flashbacks took over the less I slept, and the idea of sleeping at night became terrifying. I knew if I started to dream at night what I was seeing during the day the thread I was clinging to would snap. I could feel myself going crazy, and I fought less and less to keep it together. I almost wish I had seen you die, because my imagination created a fiery, bloody, mangled death more powerful than the crash that had actually killed you.

I stopped eating. It wasn’t an intentional choice; I simply stopped being hungry. I weighed ninety-seven pounds at the end of my junior year, my ribs and collarbone stuck out from under my skin. I was unhealthy in every way a person could be, intensified by the fact that I kept pretending to be fine. Or doing my best to pretend, to fit into who I was before. I cared about nothing but went through the daily motions of school, homework, and hanging out with friends as though these were still the most important parts of my life. I felt like I was outside of my own body most of the time, watching from the sidelines as Sarah smiled or cheered at a school soccer game.  

I would barely get through a month and then the first would roll back around and I would relive the day you had died, distracted as the ten o’clock hour struck. I wore black pants and a black shirt on the first of every month, making things uncomfortable for my very normal friends. I thought I was doing everyone a favor. I saved my differentness, my pain, for one day out of thirty. But as the time passed my behavior just struck them as annoying, as a burden they couldn’t handle.

I’m much older now, and on days when I am being mature I can say neither they or I were at fault in the disintegration of our friendships. They were kids and so was I. Within a year I had lost them all.

But thanks to Facebook I am somewhat connected to a few of the people I was once such good friends with. Sometimes, against my wishes, I see their faces on my computer screen. Many of those in my group remained friends. They go to each other’s weddings, they stop in for visits when they pass through town. Yet I am never invited, which leads me to believe they never miss me. Then I get angry that I miss them, or maybe I just miss the idea of them. I think your death stunted my growth in a big way. My ten-year high school reunion was held in August 2012, but I didn’t go. I may never be able to go. I don’t want to risk the pain, so I will live with the disappointment.

N was the first to go. He went to a church retreat the summer after your crash and was supposed to come over the day he got home. Mom was gone, and I was waiting for him at the kitchen table with Wendy’s for dinner when the phone rang.

Just like I knew by Mom’s voice that you were dead, I knew in his voice that he was leaving me.

I had known for some time that he was too pure and too good for my darkness. 

“It’s too hard, Sarah. I prayed all week about it. I can’t be with you any more.” He was quiet but resolute. The boy who had brought me through the worst year of my life, who had made me laugh when I wanted to scream, who woke me up when the flashbacks took me away, who held me tightly during the evenings I managed to sleep, had finally done all he had in him to do.

I didn’t handle the break up gracefully.

I begged him to stay with me. “I’ll go to a therapist. I’ll take medications. I will be happier. Please, don’t do this.”

He didn’t say anything. I thought I was winning him over. I know that I shouldn’t have to beg anyone to stay with me, but without him there would be no longer be a safe place for me to hide. Our romance was enough of a distraction, most of the time.

“I’m going to go now. Goodbye, Sarah.” He hung up.

I went into the kitchen and traded my Wendy’s bag for a steak knife. I blindly slashed at my wrists until the blood dripped down my arm. It made my heart stop racing. It was soothing, the teeth of the knife puncturing my skin, drawing the pain inside, out. It brought me so much peace, a floating feeling overtook me, like being sedated at the dentist. Everything slowed down. I could handle some blood, the stinging of cold water on the fresh cuts. After I had cleaned myself up the energy and anger had bled out of me. I was exhausted. I slept. I had found relief.

Mom never stopped to wonder why I was wearing long sleeves on ninety degree summer days. I cut myself whenever I felt too much or too little. Mom smoked, Mom had begun to gamble, Mom had begun to drink – how was my cutting any worse?

I went too far, once. I got scared and called one of my old friends for help.  She came over with her father. They called Mom’s cell until she finally answered, and when Mom got home, the look on their faces showed me just how pathetic we both were. Mom took me to the hospital where they cleaned up my wrists, called my wounds (me) superficial, gave me some anti-anxiety pills and sent me home. I never took the pills, and it was years before I stopped cutting myself to fall asleep. I’ve covered the worst of the scars with a tattoo, a character in a language that I don’t speak. It means forgiveness. It’s a daily endeavor to forgive myself for the things I did during those dark years. I treated myself (and Mom) terribly.