Monday, May 12, 2008
Mid-air diaper changes and occasional airsickness aside, flying with my toddler at the controls brings back the thrill I felt when my dad taught me to fly.
Apr 27, 1998 | Usually I get about half an hour. Half an hour after takeoff in our small airplane before my 2-year-old starts wiggling around in her car seat, yelling, "Mommy! I want to fly too!"
Rounding up the kids for a ride in the family plane isn't most people's typical extra-curricular activity. Maybe you take the kids camping instead, or fishing or boating. But if your dad taught you how to fly, like mine did, you grow up with a speed jones and spend your weekends out at the airport. My hope was that my daughter, Lily, would take to flying like an older friend of hers, whose parents are also pilots. Amelia's dad used to take her up in his aerobatic plane, and it was Amelia's greatest thrill to command him, "Go upside down, Daddy!" These moments, when a little girl realizes she has the power to turn the world head over heels, are what shore up her self-confidence before the madness of peer pressure and girlish insecurity set in.
"Yay! An airplane ride!" Lily shouts. "The propeller is so big! I'm going to fly the airplane with mommy and daddy! Can I get in now, please, please, please?" That's pretty much how I feel about flying, too, so it's great to have a companion who's just as enthusiastic.
Half an hour into most short flights -- when we're stabilized at cruising altitude, flying straight-and-level and riding on autopilot -- I unstrap Lily and let her climb up front on my lap. "You have to ask before you can touch anything," I remind her. But she's not easily distracted by shiny knobs and flashing lights. She knows where the action is on the one-ton hunk of metal mommy flies. Lily always heads straight for the "yoke," the airplane's steering wheel.
Lily loves to grab the yoke and roll it grandly from side to side -- which is pretty laughable considering that even I struggle sometimes to hold the heavy plane in steep turns. Lily's tiny biceps don't have much hope of moving that yoke past the small amount of play in the control cables. But that's enough to spark grins of delight from my little starter pilot. "Look at me, I'm flying!" she squeals into the microphone on her junior headset.
After a brief hand at the controls, Lily is bundled safely in her car seat for most of the flight. There, she delights in unfolding and folding the giant aviation maps, yanking on her microphone and pointing out clouds. When we begin any flight, it's Lily's special job to holler "Clear!" -- the standard warning before we crank the propeller.
Then she babbles like a tour guide during most of the flight, "See the clouds? The houses are very small." She's become good at spotting other airplanes, and once called out a distant airline jet before I saw it. Her excitement is contagious. When I pull her in the front seat for an endless stream of "What's that?" and "Why?" answering her questions takes me back 10 years, to the thrill of my early days of flying. Plus, she's killer cute in her little headset and flight suit, and when she grabs the yoke, we can't take enough snapshots.
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