Saturday, December 28, 2013

Fear of Flying

"May I see your identification, please?" asked the check-in attendant as she was issuing our boarding passes for our return trip from Georgia. Since we had round-trip tickets, it had slipped my mind to have my driver's license handy.  I fumbled for my wallet in the depths of my purse, retrieved it and went to pull my ID from the card slot.  It wasn't there!

"Ma'am, my wife is having trouble locating her license. Will any other form of identification work?" my husband implored in his most courteous tone.  She gave us the boarding passes, but said they might not admit us through security without ID. Well, thankfully I found it before we got to security in the side pocket of my purse where I had slipped it after producing it for our flight 10 days ago. We hugged our family who had accompanied us as far as security, me holding back tears at parting after such a wonderful Christmas visit with them, not knowing when we would see them again.

Well, we saw them sooner than expected, because the agent said Howard's boarding pass was missing!  "We were just issued it!" my husband exclaimed.  We went back to where our daughter and grand kids were still standing.  I stayed with them while my frustrated spouse and our 19-year-old grandson headed the long way back to the ticket counter in the Atlanta airport.  Soon they were back saying it was there all along, the man had just overlooked it!

Relieved goodbyes were said again and we successfully passed through the security gauntlet and negotiated our way through escalators, the speeding bullet that was an airport train, and pulling cumbersome carry-ons the length of the long corridor to our gate. "You're at gate four, Mom," our daughter had said, "You won't have far to walk."  She didn't know our walk started at gate 16--a long way to 4!

"Howard, look at these tickets!" I exclaimed when I saw he was in Zone 4, seat 22 A, and I was in Zone 7, 12 E.  "We aren't sitting together!  I can't put my stuff in the overhead by myself!"  He said he would fix it, and after lengthy computer work by the desk attendant, we had new boarding passes sitting together.

What else could go wrong?  Well, nothing except my making him spill his drink, until we began to descend to a lower altitude nearing our destination.  Then all our aforementioned foibles paled in comparison when I was struck with an unbelievable excruciating pain in my head!  It felt like a knife was plunged through my skull into the right side of my head and face!  It kept getting worse!

My sinuses! I had had an allergy attack the night before and hadn't slept well. This had happened to me on a flight some thirteen years ago, and I avoided flying for the next eight years, but I'd never had it when flying since. I thought I was having a stroke, and I was terrified!  I hung on to the memory that in the previous episode it went away after we landed.  Thank God, it did this time, too, but it took awhile.

"Mom, you guys are flying around the country like 20-year-olds," our son Trevor said when he called to see if we had gotten home alright.  Although I was truly thankful to be home safely, I laughed a bit ruefully and said, "I don't think I'll be flying again!"  It's not the flying that bothers me, it's the coming down!

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