Flying

I didn't fly for many years. I think it started in high school. Somewhere around my 16th birthday and reading The World According to Garp, I became deathly afraid a plane would crash into my house. We lived on the 4th floor and I frequently heard the planes going into Logan Airport in Boston in the middle of the night. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that I was home alone that summer and my parents were in Europe. In any case, after that, I became deathly afraid of getting on planes. So for about 10 years I just stopped flying. I took a lot of long car trips and trains (once took the train from Chicago to San Francisco - which despite taking 4 days was spectacular). Now with the miracle of xanax, I fly again a lot. I still don't love it, but it is no longer as painful. And I do always marvel when we get above the clouds, that this is a view our ancestors never saw. And I do love going places too.