Milk and Honey Land: A Story of Grief, Grace, and Goats

By J.M. Huxley

When a commercial airliner plunges into the heart of a young girl’s hometown, it seems a harbinger of things to come. Nightmares of plane crashes become terrifying prophecies when repeated losses to the skies continue through her time as a Southern California airborne traffic reporter, igniting a supernatural quest for understanding. But f

• Language: English
• Publisher: Author Academy Elite
• Release date: May 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781640856493

J.M. Huxley

J. M. Huxley is an award-winning author, speaker, and former broadcast journalist and airborne traffic reporter in San Diego and Kansas City. She has a B.A. in Speech Communication from San Diego State University and a Master of Journalism from Temple University, Philadelphia.

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Prologue

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made on;

And our little life

is rounded with a sleep."

—William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1623

When planes drop from the sky, they head straight for me.

I think them premonitions. Souvenirs even.

They come at night, of course, when my defenses are down, in my dreams. When my mind is at rest, could it be I have access to the future?

Sleep paints my mind in monochromatic potentiality, in time outside of time where glorious, azure joy is rumbling, smoky steel, and the skies cannot be trusted. Foreshadowing darkens every room, every sky.

It holds record of things forgotten in the light.

A plane did fall on me once.

Not on me specifically, but on my hometown. And the incident appeared, for a while, to have paved the way to an odd relationship between the skies and me.

It was one that seemed to foretell a chain of such events.

Even so, those very skies would eventually pave the way to truth, illuminating a valley of dark imaginings where a path full of light and big with colorful, unearthly brilliance would open, invading my restful wanderings too.

There would be no place or season the light could not reach.

It would connect a thousand scattered pieces together.

We are not such as dreams are made of. But sometimes our dreams can lead us home.

Even before I learn a 727 has just slammed nose first into San Diego’s historic North Park neighborhood, shadows move the landscape, overwhelming blue. I’m in eighth grade and it’s the beginning of a new school year for me—September 25, 1978.

I’m unaware of the skies.

I’m rushing to my locker to grab a few things before my next class, my head full of disco and the Dittos jeans I’ve been begging my parents for. They’re having none of it and I’m afflicted, though I’m comforted by the new Harlick ice skates with Gold Star silver blades I can’t wait to get my feet into later this afternoon. In my own realm, I’m oblivious to the drama playing out above my head as I grab the material for my next class and slam my locker door shut. My wintry rink with its large, revolving mirrored ball at center ceiling and Donna Summers’ long-winded lament over the cake she left out in the rain will have to wait.

As I make my way down the asphalt slope toward the cluster of whitewashed former naval academy bungalows now serving as classrooms at my school, I don’t see PSA Flight 182 approach Lindberg Field’s tricky airspace, or the private Cessna 172 that appears out of nowhere off to the side of the larger plane. I’m unaware of the deliberation now occurring in the 727’s cockpit as the crew catches sight of the smaller aircraft, speculates for a few minutes, and then, believing it has moved off well to the right and behind them, makes plans to proceed with the landing.

My thoughts have moved on to the new skating dress my mother is making for me, complete with a lemon-yellow crepe skirt that flutters, the cutting sound of new silver blades gliding across frosty ice, and the musical score from Dr. Zhivago, which my coach has taken the liberty of choosing for my upcoming program without consulting me. I would have selected music from Gone with the Wind. Serious skaters use serious music. Antiquated music. No vocals, of course. No syncopation.

So, I’m a weightless year away when a loud explosion is heard overhead by much of the city. When the worst happens at about 2,600 feet, I’m still flying through my own fragrant skies, through white mist delivered on sea breezes and reflected light sprinkled across daffodil ruffles. I don’t hear a thing. Neither do I see the blazing passenger jet drop from above or the resulting mushroom cloud following impact with the earth.

The private school I attend is blocks from the shore on the coast of Solana Beach, over twenty-one miles north of the scene, but nearly instantaneously most of my classmates are outside talking about the crash as if they’ve just personally witnessed the 727’s flaming plunge toward earth.

Some insist they have.

No matter, we all bump into the fallout and mine is more like a stumble into an icy hole with my blades still on. Delusions of grandeur give way to cold reality; vapid concerns escape as condensation from dry ice. An atmospheric ripple has reached us from where those planes broke heaven’s door and we’re caught. As it fans out, time stops.

And it’s strange how everything can be so eerily chilly here in sunny San Diego. And how foreshadowing isn’t only the stuff of Dickens but something that can be felt as your own story is written.

I’m not sure how I get through the rest of my school day. Thoughts of practice at the rink after school evaporate because what I really need now is the safety and security of an armored car and my mother’s paneled Buick station wagon is the next best thing. I long to get in and close the door quickly, inhaling the scent of the home she’s brought with her, the one that’s near the epicenter of today’s tragedy, the one just a few miles from North Park. Ground zero.

So I’m flooded with relief when I see her pull up after class lets out. And I’m hidden for a moment in this familiar space where September plays on the radio courtesy of Earth, Wind & Fire. Just like everything is still easy and we’ll dance the night away again.

At home familiar is in the wind. Just a meager trace of smoldering brush on the breeze and a spark of panic is fanned to flame in the minds of Californians used to the very real threat of such in desert conditions and this feels all too known and terribly different at once.

Just beyond our backyard fence is scruffy Tecolote Canyon, a great place for hiking trails and spotting wildlife.

A tinderbox most days of the year.

I know emergency crews are on the scene and working frantically to rein in control but imagination grows like fire. What if our neighborhood is next?

It isn’t as if our house hasn’t already burned to the ground before.

Even so, my jumpiness has less to do with the past and more to do with the future, less with any physical threat I perceive and more with the emotional impact I already sense in the air. Sorrow, always impressive, never fails to sway. Steadfast and more resolute than ever, it promises to linger, draped from heart to heart like a thin, invisible shroud we can’t peel off. It bonds in collaborative effort with the ash that rains down from a wounded sky, sticking in drifts to our windshields like the snow we never get. Gray.

The deadliest aviation accident in the history of the United States has just happened in my beloved city by the sea and it seems nearly every resident here has lost someone they know. I can’t wrap my head around my emotions, but foreboding makes the most sense.

Really, could this be a harbinger of things to come?

What can I say? I’m a passionate kid.

With a wild imagination.

My parents don’t want to talk about it, but I manage to extract a few details. The carnage stopped just short of their rental property. One of their tenants reported seeing the gigantic passenger jet drop from the sky and careen toward her, forever changing her story to one of escape with life and really, I cannot imagine what this must have been like.

Mom and Dad are thankful for this good part of it, and for their untouched property, but they grieve the loss of my father’s former secretary, a newly turned flight attendant and niece of good family friends who had been on board the PSA jet. I am told Marla and her roommate, also a brand-new coworker in the same position, had agreed they would never work simultaneously on the same aircraft. Just in case. They hadn’t been on an official shift together but had decided to take the same flight home.

Flight 182 had been an exception to their rule.

I may have a wild imagination, but I know exceptions are the stuff irony is made from.

And irony is the stuff of life.

How could I imagine in my wildest dreams however, that my future would be full of this fodder? That at the very moment I would fly home following school on the east coast, my father would also die in a commercial plane crash?

Or that my dad’s air disaster would not be the end of it but another tragedy in a chain of such events when I take to the skies as an airborne traffic reporter?

Perhaps that’s why my nights are full of planes falling out of the sky on me.

I always see the drop, as if I’ve time to get out of the way, but it’s an exercise in futility. I run in slow dream-motion to avoid the falling sky, my legs wobbly and useless, frantically pulling everyone I know and love out of the way and screaming, always screaming, as time runs out.

Sometimes my dreams are in faint color. Sometimes they’re faded indistinct. Regardless, I wake upon impact. Usually. One time I don’t. This time I’m on board and strapped in, like on a plunging roller coaster car, and my body and mind dive to the ground even as a part of me is held captive at the top, unwilling to follow. And I’m torn. My soul cries in agony as I slam into darkness and I’m not sure what part of me it accompanies but it doesn’t matter now.

It hurts terribly to die.

Especially when I sense it’s an awful mistake.

As the years go by and I ache with the loss of those I’ve loved, I begin to see there is more to life than meets the eye, that certainty is available for those who truly seek it.

But I will need to be emptied of myself and poured out completely on my journey beyond what anchors me here, freed from nearly every ambition and purpose I’d once had, including the resolve never to leave my hometown or broadcasting career. Only when I find myself far removed from distraction, on a small farm in Kansas where beauty will triumph over defeat and love overcome death, can the colors of promise and eternity be unveiled, illuminating further each small step on the way to the ecstasy of truth.

It will be ridiculously hard sometimes.

But there I will be reminded of who I am, of what my purpose is. And I will see that where I’ve come from is nourishment for where I am going.

Home.

Part One

California Roots

Chapter 1

The Park Bench

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

—Henry David Thoreau, Journal of 5 August 1851

Everyone needs a little park bench, he says. My father pauses to look up at me, pencil poised in his right hand, the fingers of his left curled around a half a mug of coffee. He rarely has either hand free from these props.

I take a deep breath, savoring the earthy scents of the mud he drinks like water and the heady aroma it makes wrapped around rough-sawn wood. The latter is used liberally in the décor of this architect’s office, from the exposed beams that run vertically on the ceiling above his head, to the darkly-stained molding which outlines a portion of every room. I have never seen the coffee pot empty.

I mumble enough to encourage an explanation without really wanting one but he’s not standing into a stretch to greet me with a hug as he generally does. Instead, his pencil is down and the glasses are off his nose too—signals there is plenty more to be said on the matter. Further evidence is buttressed by one of a number of Naugahyde, high-backed swivel chairs, design courtesy of Herman Miller, which Dad leans back against to settle in, that mug of coffee still in hand.

My stomach rumbles and I wonder if we couldn’t perhaps talk about this at lunch. We’re only a short distance from Old Town and thoughts of a tangy Mexican lunch have me drooling already. Our favorite restaurant has the best enchiladas on the planet and my father and I enjoy them regularly.

Today, Dad is uncharacteristically unmotivated. My standard salutation, Let’s go laugh and play!, our own special code phrase and my father’s refrain, has failed us both. It’s replaced by a bench statement laced with such sincerity, I now realize I’ll have to swallow it, along with a little self-regard. For here he is about to provide filling, poised to release more of his world into mine, more backstory in support of song.

I have a little park bench I go to in my mind when life gets to be too much. His chocolate eyes, framed by merry creases that fan out from the corners like fireworks in a Fourth of July sky and once-long lashes still visible at the age of fifty-five, twinkle with excitement as he tells me this, as if he’s sharing the secret location of buried pirate treasure.

That’s great Dad. I really don’t know what else to say. I do get it, though. Everyone needs a place to go where they can mentally escape. But I find this contrary to the cheery persona known as my father. He’s about as carefree as they come. Even now. Why would he need this coping strategy? Oh, right. I suppose it makes sense. For me as well, what with finals just a week away.

My father continues, I’ll take you there one of these days. He grins as if he’s just expanded upon my earlier prize-winnings with what’s behind Door Number Two and we’re on the TV show Let’s Make a Deal, like my mother had been when she’d won a dining room set and silverware courtesy of Monty Hall while eight months pregnant with me.

I secretly hope I don’t have to claim my winnings today, because I’d really like a plate smothered in spicy red sauce more than any park bench, but because I love him, I say the right thing. That would be nice. I smile, and I mean it.

It really would be nice. After lunch. And finals. My stomach rumbles.

It doesn’t look like he’s making an attempt to get up yet so I take the clients’ seat on the other side of the desk across from him, curling my right leg up underneath me in the process. So, it’s not just a place in your head?

It was initially. And then I found the real thing. He rocks back farther in his chair, sets his coffee on his desk, and places his hands behind his head, continuing his description of a Little Park Bench with such passionate reverence, it takes me by surprise. An ever-present luminosity shines like beacons from both eyes and I’m finally captivated. It’s a sanctuary of sorts, a peaceful oasis when life fails expectations, he explains, and I think of finding a magic wardrobe with access to my good dreams.

No one Little Park Bench looks the same.

What a strategy, I think, and I conjure up all sorts of possibilities based upon my father’s tastes and preferences. Something tells me it’s not at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art where he’s a docent. I’ve never understood his fascination with modern art, but I warm to his park retreat idea and soon realize we might be kindred spirits after all—on the idea of a mental bench anyway. I could use one. And despite my father’s blithe demeanor, I can understand why he does too.

It’s 1983 and his suffering business is a weight I’m not yet equipped to fully imagine, but it feels sore and raw anyway. It’s difficult to be in this place of memories and not look melancholy in the eye.

Empty drafting tables line up in formation in the spacious, high ceilinged adjoining warehouse space. My father has placed life-size cardboard figures of drafters cleverly colored in with architectural markers at what used to be inhabited desks, but their muted silence tastes like sour mutiny on my tongue. In spite of the fact that he’s given them names, like Beulah Mae and Meryl Ann, after the girls he knew in high school in Blackwell, Oklahoma, it’s no good. Charm is fleeced by all this pretending, even with my father’s perseverance, and it occurs to me that he should create a happily married couple in cardboard to sit on our family room couch at home too.

I remember the suede and hip floral prints, wide brimmed leather hats with tassels, and bell-bottomed jeans worn by long-haired, bearded drafters carefree in their work, powered as much by Crosby, Stills & Nash as by Pepsi-Cola or the coffee pot that never ran dry. Reality has traveled far to bring me back, where dress is limited to polyester and high-heeled pumps, and music to minimized laughter that still echoes off empty halls with talk of Little Park Benches, the air forever full of Folgers and the belief that it will all change again.

I feign delight, but the absence of life here pulls on mine, and his joy, perhaps mustered for my benefit, is something I’m having trouble absorbing. In spite of the emptiness and what must certainly be my father’s sense of loss, or worse, a feeling of failure despite past success—however temporary it is hoped to be, his never-ending sense of humor and jolly countenance will always be a constant I can count on. Even when it seems out of place, like bittersweet chocolate on scrambled eggs, fine but slightly tart, and wrong somehow.

Gone is the alternating whir of electric pencil sharpeners from various corners of the room, of movement of lead against paper and slide rules across black and white canvases, of fuel by classic rock, first leaked from small transistor radios, then wafting out from an installed state-of-the-art speaker system. Where deep, throaty chuckles punctuated attention to detail and caffeinated beverages were as fluid as thought en masse.

In the days to come, I will think a lot about the idea of a Little Park Bench. The concept becomes part of the love language my father and I share, a patois of sorts. Little Park Bench becomes my favorite vernacular phrase.

So when I finally see my father’s bench in person, I am a bit disappointed. There isn’t much to it, just an average bench in a neighborhood park burrowed between homes in a brand-new subdivision. A needle-like sapling watches over it while a sprinkler clicks off ribbons of water in rhythmic fashion nearby. The grass isn’t even a lush, verdant green, but a newly hatched lemon-lime, shorthaired variety whose future appears dubious. Wow, Dad, I want to say. But I don’t of course.

He’s enchanted, and so I allow him this moment. And try to understand him. Here is a freshly turned section of Fairbanks Ranch, one of the wealthiest communities in San Diego, maybe even in the whole world. He’s just designed a monster of a house for a client near where we now sit and I know he’s long aspired to do the same for himself. My father once drew up a smaller personalized version for us, but our family home is now in the process of fading, along with other sentient things, thanks to a skittish economy. And my parents’ divorce.

I realize then, his Little Park Bench has as much to do with aspirations as it does tranquility. To be an architect incapable of bringing his own home fantasy designs to lasting life must feel something like an artist’s inability to hang his artwork on his own walls. The way things are looking, my dad may never again breathe oxygen into life in this regard, but he’s still creating in his imagination. Here hope lives.

Of course, then, this Little Park Bench is one of the first things to come to my mind following his death in a plane crash. Next are all the homes and buildings he set down for posterity in our city, along with those he will never have an opportunity to envision.

It’s May 2, 1989, and the phone is ringing. I’m busily getting ready to move home to San Diego from the Philadelphia area, where I’ve finished graduate school at Temple University, gotten married, and started a family. I plan to fly out first thing in the morning with my eight-month-old son Taylor and a sedated marble cat named Gizmo and I’ve no time to talk. I can’t wait to get back to my hometown and I’ve a million things to do so I feel harried at the summoning of a device that has no ability to identify the caller. I consider letting it drone on but finally relent and pick up the receiver.

The sound of my dad’s voice at the other end crackles with warm laughter and I’m instantly transported to his side, thankful I’d picked up for him. I exhale and sit down cross-legged on the floor, and it occurs to me we should have planned this better when he reminds me he’s flying out in the morning as well. I could have seen you get your award Dad. I could have flown to St. Louis to meet you on the way home. I can’t believe we didn’t think of that!

A long pause on the other end of the line tells me he’s seriously considering the proposal. Of course he is, and because I know he is, I quickly become serious too, working out the logistics in my head as well. It’s only seconds before we both come to terms with the lateness of the hour. We simply don’t have time to iron out all the last-minute details, particularly with a baby in tow. Yeah, he replies, his voice audibly heavy with regret, and something cracks there that makes my heart feel like rushing water over a fall.

Well, I continue cheerfully, we can at least wave to each other in the air since we’ll be crossing paths! I imagine our planes passing one another in opposite directions somewhere over Kansas, about the same time.

That familiar, infectious chuckle flares up again, telling me he agrees. No words immediately follow so I figure he’s still holding on to possibilities. My heart follows his voice into air clear enough to close the distance between us, but something else waits on the line and sensing discomfort there, I break in.

I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow Daddy. I am so proud of you. And I am. So proud. Beyond words proud. He had recently retired to Vancouver Island and while he hadn’t done so as a wealthy man by any means, he’d finally achieved something more important than money or retirement, something he’d wanted for a long time: election to the FAIA. He’d been granted Fellowship in the American Institute of Architects and would fly to St. Louis to be honored.

I’d been a kid when he’d been president of the San Diego Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. This fellowship, however, is the honor of a lifetime, intended to recognize architects who’ve been in practice at least ten years, achieved a certain level of excellence in the profession, and who’ve influenced society with noteworthy architectural contributions. Though my father is humble and I’ve never heard him boast, I know this recognition is something he’s aspired to for an epoch. Something he deserves. I’m crestfallen I can’t share it with him and even more so when I think about him traveling alone. What was I thinking?

My father went north when I went east and I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from the lack of closure regarding our living arrangements. After my parents separated, I’d lived initially with Mom in our family house and then moved in with Dad during my late college years. Later, while I’d temporarily relocated to Philly for grad school, his longtime best friend, another San Diego architect, persuaded Dad to join him for retirement in British Columbia. Conveniently, my father had found a place right across the street from the home this friend and his wife purchased in a small town on Vancouver Island.

His new home was founded on logging in the 1800s and is now an artsy hamlet known for its hand-painted murals and Native American totems, as well as quaint waterfronts. Numerous inlets and surrounding islands dot the landscape in this part of the world, the perfect place for my father’s enthusiasm. When I visited British Columbia last year, he made sure I’d been to every museum, and each artistic or historical attraction. Every coffee shop. Nobody gets as fired up about history or art or coffee as my father and there is plenty of all of it there. The smell of coffee downtown is nearly stronger than the sea air.

Dad’s town is directly accessible only by ferry or small plane and the closest airport is about twenty miles away. The small selection of puddle jumpers from which to take flight is something that delights my dad to no end. His sardonic viewpoint necessitates frequent jabs about the rickety flights he must endure between Vancouver and the island. He always refers to the most prominent provider as Attila the Hun Air, and I’d heard more from him last year on the subject of flying than on any other topic regarding British Columbia, Pacific Northwest Native American art aside, as I’d prepared for a visit with him.

I can’t help but think about that airport now because my own flight out last spring left such an impression on me. I was married and newly pregnant when I arrived in town to care for him following open-heart surgery that required a quadruple bypass. When it was time to get ready to head back to Philadelphia, I was overcome with emotion and had a difficult time getting on the plane. By some stroke of luck, I was offered a chance to sit up next to the pilot during my initial flight back to the mainland and the first-class seat in the small aircraft provided me a bird’s-eye view of the ground below. I had no trouble seeing my dad as we took off.

There he was in his usual laidback pose with arms folded across his chest, feet kicked out from under him, his tan Member’s Only windbreaker casually zipped halfway down, salt and pepper curls unraveling in the wind. As always, his unwavering smile was the clearest part of him. He was the only figure on the pitifully small wooden platform where I had been only a short time before, and though he appeared statuesque and unflinching, he’d also never appeared more relaxed to me. His eyes held mine in bond, as if my face through glass was a breath away and contentment was something he could impart by sight. He would soon head back to San Diego but in that moment, he was as satisfied as if he’d already staked his tent poles for good.

But as content as he appeared, I was discontent. I should have felt elated about our time together, about my baby and the future. The visit had been good! Yet woven through it was something I couldn’t put my mind on. It may have been the lingering effects of his surgery that had frightened me tremendously or the stubborn pregnancy nausea that plagued me, particularly during drives along the islands’ many curvy roads. Likely my own hormones played a roll. And maybe it was all of those things, all of the humanness, life elements full of understanding, concepts of the speed in which life passes and gives way to the new, a recognition that there is only forward not back. Any attempts to linger in the past are only exercises in futility, as profitable as salt in the wind.

He’d found a new Little Park Bench in the form of his very own small wooden deck. It sat just above an aluminum boat shed, rusty in patches and imperfectly perfect, just like him. No literal bench was to be found, but a couple of old patio chairs pushed up to a little round table, where we drank coffee, of course, the air heavy with the sea. His view was superb—one hundred eighty degrees to a horizon scattered with islands and the occasional humps of playful whales. It doesn’t get much better than this! Again, those magical, sparkling eyes. What a persuasive case!

But I still couldn’t find it in my soul to love it the way he did, even if I did see it as an improvement over the last. Instead, its remoteness from me only gave me anguish…or perhaps it was the very idea that it didn’t belong to me.

Me, still on a quest for my own.

Whatever ailed me in spite of our effort to laugh and play like we once had clung to me with unnerving persistence and distance was a thief. The trip had only emphasized the miles between us and I was miserable with sorrow so intense, it left no cell belonging to me unaffected.

And so, the sight of my beloved father upon departure from his island was one that I already knew was being branded, forever etched upon my recollections. I sobbed that day as if I would never see him again, for surely that is how it felt in a place full of sorrowful energy, as if a physical force held me in its grip while I lost mine. Once settled in my seat, I had cried so violently as he disappeared from sight, I never regained my composure or uttered one word on the flight back to the mainland.

It’s now exactly one year later—could it be to the very day? And I’m wishing I could fly out to meet him and close the distance between us again. I don’t know what else to say so I fill up the miles with talk of the Chinese menu I found that says Taylor, he, and I were all born in the same Chinese year, and of all the wonderful and miraculous things his grandson is doing. I’m so thankful I picked up the phone. I love you Daddy! I tell him before hanging up.

Looking back, I must have known I had run out of time. For I felt the end as it approached, a page turned, another chapter in the story of me finished. Something I foreknew again. My daddy was already gone.

The next morning I’m in the terminal at Philadelphia International getting ready to board a plane with a baby and a cat when dread paints me in goose bumps.

Because I know something is wrong.

There’s going to be a plane crash today.

I turn to my husband and make a pronouncement that is out of my mouth before I know it.

May third is a date we will always remember.

I stare out the enormous terminal window in front of us to take in our aircraft as he eyes me suspiciously. He isn’t flying with us but will soon follow to San Diego in a truck loaded with our possessions and I really do hate to be macabre, or even dramatic, it’s just that I can’t keep my roiling feelings to myself. There’s going to be a plane crash today!

So there it is.

I am a passionate person.

With a wild imagination.

Now that I’ve unloaded my sick worry on him, because he does believe me thanks to a past track record of prophetical success, I get on the plane anyway and breathe deeply, chastising myself all the while for my dark imaginings. Once we are airborne, my mind isn’t abated. I fight with myself during the duration of the flight, attempting in vain to vanquish images of mid-air collisions and other possible calamities. It’s ridiculous, really. I know that. Yet I cannot help it. Calm down, I whisper to myself.

Daddy flies all the time and nothing has happened.

I fly back and forth between home and school all the time!

The chances are exceptionally low. But I’m agitated throughout the journey and holding my breath as we make the approach to Lindberg Field.

I remember North Park.

As we skim over the site of the infamous PSA crash years ago and the lovely treetops of Balboa Park, as I look to the glittering sea beyond and we duck down between an assortment of downtown buildings, I remember how my father used to tell me he could see people sitting at window tables sipping martinis in the popular Mr. A’s upon landings. Since then, the flight patterns have changed but I look to that landmark and try to imagine the upscale restaurant on the top floor that makes the best Caesar salad around. It’s no use. Off in the distance ahead, as the expansive Pacific sparkles brilliantly, I’m bracing for trouble.

I just hope we crash before we hit the water.

After what feels like the longest approach on record, the wheels finally hit the tarmac with a slight bump and we’re on the ground. Still, persistent thoughts of wayward jets careening off course fill my mind, for we’re not out of the woods yet I fear and getting off this alighted missile cannot happen fast enough for me. Let’s hurry this up, I mutter under my breath.

When the seat belt sign goes off, I’ve already collected the sedated cat in a carrier under the seat in front of me and the energetic baby on my hip. I make for the bridge while affecting a coolness I don’t feel, and when my feet finally hit the shiny terminal floor and I’m a good distance removed from the windows, I exhale in relief. I see my smiling mom and I almost cry with relief. We are finally safe!

How weird was that?

The phone is ringing as we arrive at Mom’s house. She rushes to grab it while I haul my luggage and a large diaper bag in through the front door. With my