What could be more peculiar than flying in an airplane? No matter how many hundreds of times we’ve joined the procession to file into that big metal tube, no matter how used to... read more
The first time I boarded a plane to Honolulu, it was a one-way ticket and I cried most of the flight. I’d just turned 15 and while more than once in the recent... read more
Despite my advice, Captain Juanito felt prepared to take a midnight flight. It was dangerous enough just standing in the stockroom. Why my cousin decided to fly his plane in the shelving fortress... read more
I wake in an altered state as we descend from Phoenix into JFK. My cylinders fire, my spindles spin, my cogs turn, but the time surrounding the machine is warped and delayed and... read more
The Great American South, till now, remained a mystery, one that blurredly conjured thickset women in rolled down stockings fanning themselves in the heat on a porch stapled to the earth by wisteria... read more
The adolescent seatmate plunked down in the narrow seat next to me on the plane bound for Phoenix. The electronic game was immediately taken from its case and thumbs set in motion to... read more
Propped up in bed with the 1918 Spanish flu, Lydia Burkholder of Nappanee, Indiana, sighed restlessly. An Amish ten-year-old and my eventual grandmother, she longed to go outside. Her fever had broken but... read more
The early morning light made long tree shadows below us. I took the card out of the pocket of the seat in front of me. It said we were on a Vickers Viscount... read more
Boarded but stuck in a delay at the gate, I see that one of my ex’s posted a picture of her Bible in sunlight on her old wooden table—some glare on the red... read more
I sat next to a woman and her eight-year old daughter on a cross-country flight one day. That's not that long, you may think, but by the time we landed it felt like... read more
