Flying for the First Time

by Loreena Walsh | Family Travel, Thoughts & Ideas

Halloween has a special meaning in our family. It was my Mother In-law’s birthday. Thinking about her on October 31st led me back to remembering the first time I flew in a plane. It’s a story I’m sharing here, not too sure why, maybe because the stories that make up our personal novels lead us to the decisions we make later on. Even though this is only a paragraph of this novel that is our lives, it’s a story that has shaped our decisions as a family. It answers so much about why we are the people that we are.

I clearly remember the first time I flew in a plane. Unfortunately for me it’s not really a flight I choose to reminisce about at all. Thankfully for my children their first flight was a much more positive experience, although I’m not sure they even remember it.

I was 21 the year of my first plane flight.

You see, family holidays for me, my entire childhood were about sitting in the old Holden station wagon, mum and dad with their windows down, blowing wind into our faces so fiercely that it was difficult to breathe, legs sticking to the hot vinyl seating, eating packed peanut butter sandwiches and only stopping for urgent pee breaks on our way to visit family. Dad getting lost or taking the wrong turn and using language that our young ears really should never have heard, on long trips that mostly lasted 5-8 hours. Regardless, I still remember the resulting holidays with happiness. So you see, there were no flights in my childhood.

My teen and adult years had been spent working hard. Managing a pizza joint working stupidly long hours, all for a miniscule wage. When the opportunity for a short break arose, it consisted of spending an entire weeks wage on a road trip, often to Byron Bay to sleep in the back of my little hatch back, eating fish and chips, surrounded by other free spirited people, and just enjoying the freedom of driving until we found a new spot that we liked. My little hatch back (A Toyota Starlet affectionately known as Reddy who is still in our family today 🙂 ) has taken me on many adventures and drives up to 17 hours away, but alas I’d never flown anywhere.

So the day of my first flight was expected, yet unexpected all the same.

I was working as a retail manager, living almost 700kms away from my then boyfriend (now husband) while he helped nurse his sick mother who had been battling with all her might against cancer. We’d had good news, things were looking up and his mum was to come home from Sydney, the doctors felt as though she was doing well enough to return  home to the family. Exciting news!

Until the phone call: “They’ve given mum a few hours, a community worker has organised for my sisters to fly straight down, you need to try and organise a way to get here as fast as you can.” It was important that I be there, she was like my mum, she’d taken me in at 15 and been an anchor for me. She’d been sick almost all the time I’d known her, but I considered her my mum, and I needed to be there.

Living in Regional Australia doesn’t leave you much choice in flights, and I was just lucky I could get a flight that afternoon. So a quick call to the area manager (who wasn’t too impressed, and I never much respected after that!) to say I was leaving the shop that afternoon and didn’t know when I would return, and I was on a flight to Sydney at the expense of around $400 one way, I was lucky it was a pay week!

I’d always been nervous about flying, I wasn’t sure what to expect either on the flight, or when I arrived at Sydney Airport. I still remember the bumpiness, and the first time seeing the cotton-like clouds underneath the wings of the plane. The noisy hum of the engine, and the fear of what I was facing at the other end of this journey. Where did I go when I arrived, were there directions to taxis? To trains? To the bus? How did I get to the hospital? Lucky for me, a close friend met me as I made my way through arrivals. Relief engulfed me and made the hard journey to the hospital a whole lot more comforting.

As fate would have it, I spent 4 days in Sydney, with nothing but the work clothes I had been wearing, watching every breath, every monitor, sharing those last moments in a room with an amazing lady surrounded by family who loved her so much. I watched my (soon to be) husband suffer pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone, I watched us all suffer pain. Cancer does that to families.

But each time I fly, each time I travel, she’s there with us, her memories. She’s there with us always.

The tragedy of losing someone so young (she was 48) when we were so young, has led us to appreciate the greatest things in life. Being the owner of a house didn’t matter to her (of which she owned 2), how much money she had didn’t matter (she didn’t have a whole lot) but the children, husband and family who spent those life moments by her side, well, they meant the world.

I wish everyone understood the real meaning of life. It’s not about the material possessions, it’s not about things, it’s about moments, and people, and being with the ones you love.

When people ask us, why we don’t own a house, aren’t we worried we’ll never have “anything” if we take off and travel, I just look at my husband and my children and know that I have everything.