The Fish Pond

Clawing Toward Light

You may have noticed things have been a bit quiet around here for a while now. Ever since weaning Nemo back in February, I've slipped deeper and deeper into my own mental Pit of Despair, though I really didn't realize that the dark tendrils had been drilling their way inside my brain and heart until fairly recently, really only a month ago. Since then, I've been trying to make changes in my life to take care of myself, clear out the detritus, and let the damned nursing hormones out of my body (I'm still producing milk despite not having nursed anyone since February, much to my chagrin) and see where my new setpoint is. I've been nursing or pregnant for all but a handful of months of the last ten years. I have no idea who I am anymore.

Looking in the mirror each day and hating what you see staring back at you isn't a way to live a life. BigDaddyFish has been begging me to start up my exercise routine that was such a lifesaver last year, but I've been putting it off because Nemo, at 2.5, is into everything and needs constant vigilance, and frankly I have to pay a babysitter to be able to do it, and this economy and my old house haven't been kind to us financially (thank you, root canal, busted garbage disposal, rising gas prices and a 1.5 hour each way commute). The rain has been startling this year, where we are typically talking about drought we are talking about flash flood warnings instead. But things kind of reached a head this past weekend, and I hit rock bottom.

Today, I put on the Angry Music and walked. In the rain. I wasn't dressed properly for it, fancy bra instead of sports bra, jeans instead of yoga pants or sweats, no hat. Which may not seem like a big deal to you, unless you yourself sport 40DDs and wear glasses and have walked in the rain. My hair wasn't up. But I did it, for 2.5 miles, and would have kept going had I not had to go to the grocery store (my god, can't these people stop eating for a day or so? no? feh.) and then get home in time for dinner. And it felt good.

My muse is somewhere tangled up in those dark tentacles of misery, and I don't want this place to become the all despair, all the time channel. So I propose I start telling some of my stories. Family folklore from my childhood, from my grandparent's childhood. How my parents met. How I went through a previous time where the darkness threatened to overtake me and I almost died, and how my wonderful roommate fed me and kept me alive and salvation came in the form of a manboy who was Tom Cruise's doppelganger (before The Crazy, that is). And how that manboy is not my husband. And maybe some of the crazy shit I've done in my life. Because those things don't make me hurt right now. And just maybe walking those paths will bring me back to myself.

Into the Sunlight

"So," she said, looking at me intently, "what do you want to do about other appointments?"

What, indeed. I'd been thinking about this over the course of the previous couple of weeks. Little signs, glimpses into my previous life had been seeping in, soaking in, filling me up enough for me to finally take notice. Like finding myself, on a Tuesday afternoon, instead of stressing about the housework and how BigDaddyFish was going to react to it not being done, rolling around on the floor with Sunny and Nemo, tickling and wrestling and laughing, and realizing, momentarily, that I was happy, and there wasn't a single thing that was more important than that and not a single thing I'd rather be doing at that time.

It had been so long I really didn't know what the feeling was at first.

Like being out with Trout, talking with her, seeing her smile, seeing her dance in her ballet classes and focusing entirely on her, and what she's feeling, and not on myself, not avoiding the other parents because of fear of them judging me for having too many kids, for not showering enough, for dressing frumpy, for being overwhelmed, for being awkward, for not knowing what to say, for being afraid.

Like being able to calmly, easily talk to Little Man about what has been bothering him, about why he's been fighting at school, realizing that it had more to do with me and my wallowing in negativity than anything he's been able to articulate, and being able to talk with him and come up with ways to help him be calmer and deal with his emotions in a healthy way.

Like wanting to spend time with my husband, remembering why we got married in the first place, why we are friends, and having a damn good time doing it. And disagreeing with and fighting with him without wanting to punch him out or run away from home.

Like being a lot more free with my hugs and kisses, and watching them be returned.

I have a couple of big windows in the front of my house, in the front of my living room where we spend most of our time, and they have blackout shades on them. So many days between when Sunny turned one and when I started to come out of this black hole that I'd been digging deeper and deeper those shades would stay drawn, because I was unable to cope, unable to see the sun, unable to face what my life had become, the loss of control, the feelings of helplessness and worthlessness. The lack of hope. The anger and resentment.

"How about I just call you when I need you?" I asked.

"As long as you keep in touch, because I worry about my patients, and wonder how their lives have turned out."

Consider it done. Thank you for giving me my life back.

And thank you, readers, friends, for helping me get there, for being here despite my illness and my own fear of putting it out there - you had a hand in this, more than you'll ever know.

Sunny Says, and Letting Go

BigDaddyFish, Sunny, and I were laying in my bed this morning. I'm snuggled up against BDF on one side, arm slung over his chest, and Sunny is sitting on his other side. I keep pretending my hand is a spider and tickling Sunny on her side, causing squeals and giggles. She suddenly lays down next to BDF, pulls the covers up to her chin, and says,

"G'night, Daddy. G'night, cweepy spider."

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I have been making a huge effort of late to try and live more simply. I have been feeling unsettled lately, out of control, pushed and pulled in too many directions, not enough time to absorb and adjust to changes as they come. In an effort to exert some control, I've been cleaning out my house, getting rid of the debris of years, detritus associated with past lives, reminders of sadness and things that bring me down, emotionally and spiritually. The letting go is sometimes hard; this past weekend BDF helped me pack up and get rid of every piece of clothing that doesn't fit or that I don't love. I've been hanging on to so many things, clothes mostly, things that fit before kids, or after one kid but not now. One of the things they never tell you about having kids when you are "older" is that the old bod just doesn't bounce back like it used to, and I haven't wanted to let go of that view of self. This weekend, I was finally ready, but it wasn't without pain.

This morning I took 11 bags of clothes and shoes to charity. This morning, I feel free, ready to move on to the next room, ready to adjust my life to how it is now, instead of how it used to be. And you know what? How it is now is really a pretty good place to be.

Biggest guilty thing of the weekend:

That, my friends, is more than 3 years of accumulated socks, waiting to be matched up. BDF and I spent probably an hour and a half matching them up, throwing out those that were threadbare and giving away those that were outgrown. You have no idea how this was weighing on me. It's amazing how heavy socks can be.

It's amazing how freeing five empty laundry baskets are. [Note: the socks aren't from five baskets - the socks only took up one medium sized basket, but I also got caught up on folding this weekend, so all my baskets were free until this morning.]

In the Moment

Yesterday it snowed here. Some other time I'll talk about what DC is like in the snow, where people freak the hell out at the sight of a single snowflake and fortify their houses as though for a 40 year famine. Yesterday they were calling for "up to an inch of snow" and, as usual, we got about three. The big kids were at school, I was cold and tired and grouchy, so the littles and I were hunkered down in my front room with the television on, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to get a nap in without the little kids destroying the house while I did it.

Some sort of nonsense song came on, and Nemo started to shake his little booty, grinning and giggling like the concept of a simple booty shake was the greatest thing in the world. Sunny joined in, she too giggling and grinning, so I hopped up and shook my big ol' booty, too. The snow continued to fall softly, gently, outside cold and gray and silent. Inside was warmth and song and movement and joy.

"Mama, let's do Ring Around the Rosie," urged Sunny, so we each took one of Nemo's hands and we held hands, me on my knees to take care of my back, and around we went, singing and gently tugging Nemo around in a circle, collapsing in a great heap of giggling and tickling on "all fall down." We did it two more times, and after the third time we lay there on the floor, Sunny, Nemo, and I, and it occurred to me, briefly, that I was happy, and it was not the first time in the last month or so that has happened.

Happy.

Recovery is, indeed, possible.

Please Please Please Pick Up the Phone Today and Support the Mothers' Act

As any of my regular readers know, I struggle with postpartum depression. Every. Single. Day. But I am blessed in that I am lucky enough to have known about the disease and how to get help, and I have health insurance that covers my visits, at least partially.

But too, too many women don't have what I have. They don't know about the disease. They think that they are alone. They don't have health insurance, or what they have is inadequate to cover what they need to get better. And this is a crime.

Only 15% of women get the help they need for postpartum depression and related disorders. Education is needed for both women and healthcare providers, so that this disease can be effectively and quickly identified and treatment administered. And women and families who can't afford it should never, ever be at risk because they can't pay for treatment.

Now, Congress is finally doing something to help those in need. Senators Durbin and Menendez have introduced the Mothers' Act, S. 3529, in the Senate. This bill will provide much needed funding for education and screening for postpartum depression, and will also fund research into diagnosis and treatment, as too little is known about the disease and the treatments that are available are sometimes not effective, or have side effects that lead to women discontinuing treatment. Improvements need to be made.

Please join me, BlogHers Act, Postpartum Support International, and Postpartum Progress in supporting this bill. Look at these links to find out how to contact your senator and tell him or her that supporting this bill is important to you. Together, our voices are strong and can't be ignored.

Those who have no voice, or think they have no strength, need our help.

Broken

Yesterday morning was a bad, bad morning for me. Despite the good feelings left over from the weekend, I didn't tolerate things well yesterday when I needed to get all four kids up and out the door and all four kids were resistant to that. I had to drop the big kids at the bus, drop Sunny off at preschool the next town over, and go to my therapy appointment clear across town in the opposite direction, by 9:30. We are not morning people, but for whatever reason it was an order of magnitude worse than usual.

I tried being nice and waking the kids up nicely, which they did, but it all went to hell in the proverbial handbasket in about five and a half minutes. The kids refused to get dressed when I asked them to the first time, when I asked them to the second thru fifth times, when I shouted at them to get dressed, when I attempted to redirect them away from the baby to the tasks they were all each responsible for doing themselves. They all wanted to get in bed and snuggle with Daddy, who has extreme sleep issues and couldn't get up himself.

To make a very long, private, complicated story very very short, I yelled a lot. I thought no more so than usual, but apparently BigDaddyFish thought so and, thanks to our wonderful communicating status, it upset him worse than usual. He called me long after I had gotten the kids out of the house, before I dropped Sunny off, to tell me his feelings about what had happened and ask me to discuss it with my therapist.

BigDaddyFish is a Big Picture kind of guy. That's how he sees things, that's what he focuses on. I, on the other hand, am a Details kinda girl. There was a big misunderstanding. He said something in a way that didn't really communicate what he wanted, I misunderstood it too and overreacted, and it left us both frustrated and angry. I felt blindsided by the conversation, since I had thought I wasn't any worse than usual. It threatened to escalate, but I thought we both did a good job of keeping things civil, if tense, and I talked to my therapist about it. That added in more misunderstanding.

All day long after that, I had a vaguely unsettled feeling, like something was lurking around the corner just waiting to come and get me, and I couldn't figure out why. Several times I caught myself on the verge of tears without any clear reason why. I knew things were going Bad, but I really really didn't have a clue why, and I was scared. Real scared. I tried to talk to BigDaddyFish about it when he came home, but he was still pissed off about the morning and things escalated.

Another long long story short, I lost my temper and put my foot through the drywall. Twice. It was either that or punch BigDaddyFish in the nose.

BDF and I are both stubborn, passionate, strong-willed people. Both oldest children. Neither of us backs down, or backs off, easily. Putting my foot through the drywall terrified me. The degree of rage scared the crap out of me. I fought hard to maintain some small semblence of control for the rest of the night so that BDF and I could talk about this. We finally were able to very early this morning, and again later. We were finally able to uncover some of the misunderstandings, to find some place in our psyches to process things, to talk and identify issues and causes and possible solutions. We both want very very much to get back to where we were just a couple of days ago.

Why the heck am I telling you this? One, if you or your partner is struggling with postpartum depression, I want you to know you are not alone. If you feel at all "unsettled" or vaguely off, please please do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself or to get the help you need to stave it off before it explodes like I did. I didn't eat right, sleep well, get virtually any exercise, or do self-nurturing things yesterday. I'm sure it was a factor. If I had mentioned the out of sortsness to my therapist, maybe we could have come up with a plan for the day to help me make sure I would be best able to maximize my own chances at not exploding. If your partner is at all out of sorts, please try and be aware that they may not be aware of what they are doing, and GENTLY bring it to their attention, without blame. I know what a pain in the ass it can be, and sometimes it can feel like you are dealing with a child or someone trying to manipulate you and make your life miserable. Some people are like that, but most, like me, desperately want to get better and not be that way, not be overly sensitive to criticism, not be prone to frustration, not be on the verge of tears - they don't mean to cause problems, and they regret everything to a degree I hope you never ever have cause to understand. Try anyway. Their life may just depend on it. Two, I hope someone can benefit from the shared experience - I know it helps me when things are at my worst to know that I'm not as abnormal and screwed up as I feel. Three, I hope that by being public with my struggles with this disease, it will help erase the stigma of mental illness, of postpartum depression, which will hopefully one day make it easier for women to ask for and receive treatment.

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Unfortunately I woke up Trout when I put my foot through the wall. I talked to her frankly and honestly about what is going on with me, to the best of my ability, on a level that she could understand. No details, just Big Picture. I explained that sometimes the chemicals in the brain start working wrong, and when that happens sometimes people are sad a lot and don't really know how to handle stress. I explained that when someone's brain is like that, they sometimes can't figure out how to handle problems, and what is really something quite small seems very very big to them. I told her how very very much I love her, her and her brothers and sister, how they are the most important things in my life and how I am trying my hardest to get well. I explained that the doctor I've been seeing every week is helping me talk about things and work through them. I told her I was not angry at her, reassured her that is wasn't her fault at all and really had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. I told her she could ask me or Daddy anything at all about it if she had questions. I asked her if she did, and she asked me how I was going to fix the drywall. Maybe she needs details, like me.

This morning, I woke BigDaddyFish up first, instead of the kids. We talked a lot. When Trout's alarm went off, she got up immediately of her own accord, instead of staying in bed for 45 minutes until we can't possibly make the bus without much shouting and scurrying, like she usually does. She got dressed and came downstairs to get her breakfast. BDF and I continued to talk. We heard a scurrying rustling in our room, and I got up to see who else had gotten up. It was Trout. She had made me a smiley face breakfast, with 2 oreos for eyes, a Little Debbie Fudge Round for a nose, and a handful of cheerios for a mouth.

Then she went back downstairs and made "breakfast" along the same lines for everyone else in the family.

I do not deserve such a creature. 

R&R Weekend

This past weekend I did something I've never done before.

I went away. By myself. Well, without the kids and BigDaddyFish.

One of my best friends, who I have known since 9th grade when her family moved to the DC area from a tiny town in western Pennsylvania, owns a cabin in a lake area in western Pennsylvania popular with vacationers. Hunters, anglers, outdoorsy people of all kinds go there.

Typically, her husband and his buddies go up there to "check" on the cabin. Which we all know is code for "drink ourselves silly and get thrown out of bars." It takes all of five minutes to "check" on the cabin, yet it always took him a whole weekend to do it. So one day, S asked her husband "When do I get to go check on the cabin?"

So this weekend, S and her twin sister S, their younger sister S, their mom, another friend of theirs, and I went to the cabin to "check" on it. Younger Sister S is pregnant, and because I am still breastfeeding I didn't want to drink, so she and I did the non-alcoholic pina coladas and margaritas, while the rest got a little warmer. We lit a big campfire, made mountain pies, and generally had a silly, crazy time. We talked, and talked, and talked. And we laughed. If it's true that you burn lots of calories laughing, then I may have lost weight this weekend, in spite of the mountain pies, because practically all we did was laugh. So hard we cried.

These are women who know me better than anyone else. Women who are like a mother and sisters to me. They, and their relationship, are my primary example of what I want my family to be like. I can totally and completely be myself with them without fear of judgment. I wish I could spend that kind of time with them more often, but with jobs, spouses, a total of nineteen kids among the six of us, and geographic distance that just isn't possible. We have promised each other we'll make this an annual thing.

It was wonderful. I had debated for about the whole last week whether or not I wanted to go. I was worried about how Nemo was going to do overnight without me, since he won't take a bottle. I worried about how BigDaddyFish would fare with all the kids by himself. I felt bad, because his birthday was Sunday and I wasn't going to be there for his birthday weekend (for the record, he told me he didn't mind if I went, and we typically don't do anything for his birthday, anyway, because he's a bit of a curmudgeon, and I was home before dinner). I am so glad I went. I didn't know the best was yet to come.

BigDaddyFish and the kids cleaned the entire living room while I was gone. Now, he had to call in the in-laws to help that get accomplished, but he isn't bothered by them like I am, so it worked out. His father's mother is staying with his parents right now, so she came and helped out, too. Trout had conspired with the in-laws to get a birthday cake for BigDaddyFish, so they had a little birthday celebration on Saturday night. At first I was a little jealous of this (okay, a lot jealous) because they had done it without me and no one had done anything for me on my birthday, but it didn't last long because clearly they had had a nice time, I didn't have to spend time being annoyed by them, AND they saved me a big piece of cake. With a purple flower.

Best of all, BigDaddyFish wrote me a five page letter, just talking about how he felt about the weekend and stuff. He ended up feeling bad that I was gone on his birthday and that surprised him. I did remind him that if he had said it would bother him I would have stayed home in a nanosecond, but he was glad I had gone. He thanked me for the gift of giving him time alone with the kids (I had to ask if he was being sarcastic about this, but he assured me he wasn't) - that he felt that way just made it more of a win-win situation. He said a bunch of other stuff, too, private things. It was lovely.

It touched me in a way that I hadn't thought possible. The only reason I mention it, mostly, is that it is an example of how important keeping the lines of communication open is to a marriage. That particular task gets harder and harder (to me, anyway) with each child you add to your family, because resources become spread thinner and thinner. Writing letters to one another can provide a different way to keep doing that. It lets you talk about issues that might be too emotionally charged to talk rationally about, particularly if you tend to get so emotional you can't think straight, not that I'd know anything about that (ahem).

Nemo did fine. He missed me, alright, and I missed him, more that I thought I would. The others? Well, I missed them, but I didn't MISS them - it was a welcome break from their particular type of chaos, but I missed the baby so much I ached. I pumped so much milk I didn't have room to bring it all home with me. He took formula from a cup while I was gone. BDF said that he woke up once in the night, did a visual check to make sure BDF was still there, then laid down and went back to sleep. He has slept through the night both nights since I've been home. Before I left, he had been getting up two times a night to nurse, so this is huge.

I'm sure glad to be home.

Sudden Upsurges of Grief

There are times that you expect to be rough. Holidays, for sure, especially the first one after they're gone. Birthdays, anniversaries, the anniversary of their death. You prepare yourself for those, as best you can; you insulate, become more reflective, make sure you buy enough wine.

But the truly hard times aren't those times after a few years have gone by. It's the other times, the times that sneak up on you, tiptoe in and stab you in the heart when you least expect it.

My therapist says they're called Sudden Upsurges of Grief, or SUGS, and even after 22 years, I still have them.

Just like I did when I was 19, and was shopping for school clothes at the mall, and seeing girls shopping with their mothers made me lose my shit, right there in the middle of a sunny August afternoon at the mall.

Like I did when Trout was a tiny baby and slept all the time and I didn't know what to do with myself.

At BlogHer, several of the bloggers brought their family members with them. This isn't a big deal - I did the same. But more than one blogger brought her mother with her to assist with care of her little ones. And seeing them together, hearing the women who were presenting on BlogHers Act mention Liz's Mom's reaction to the gathering, was a quite unexpected SUG, and I had to fight back tears.

I don't know how my mother would have felt about the conference. I knew her as my mother, the mother to a child, and not as a woman, with thoughts and feelings and understanding about the world that to me, as a child, a mother didn't have, because she was all about me, right?

I've always wanted to know. How she felt about breastfeeding, if she would have gone back to college, how she coped with my father's mental illness, did her political slant change over time. What was her favorite color? How did she handle my father's long absences when he was in the military and my sister and I were babies? If she were on her own, how would she live her life?

Who was she? Outside of a wife, a mother, a daughter.

I want to know the grandmother she would have been, the woman she was. Now, 22 years later, at the age she was when she died, I still don't know.

And it's heartbreaking that I never will.

Shards

I wanted to tell you about so much.

I wanted to tell you how last week, Monday night, Nemo fell out of our bed, where he has been sleeping with us since he outgrew the bassinet. I was down here reading blogs doing dishes when BigDaddyFish appeared, got a drink, and went back upstairs, through our bedroom to the loft, where his computer is. Two minutes later the sickening crash/thud and the screaming. Oh, the screaming. We both ran to him, held him, rocked him, rubbed his back, and soothed and comforted him until he calmed down, but he continued to do that "Wah!" baby cussing thing at us for a good hour after. Sunday I put his crib together, where it sits in the middle of our room, at the foot of our bed, where there is little room to walk around it to get in the bed.

I wanted to tell you that BDF has taken some positive steps in trying to fix the hating the job problem that he has, but I can't tell you details yet.

I wanted to tell you that we went down to the National Building Museum on Saturday, BDF, Nemo, and me, and how when we got there we discovered there was a huge event called The Big Draw going on, because a new exhibit featuring the work of David Macaulay opened that day, and he was there signing books and they had all kinds of drawing classes for kids and we didn't know because we are dense parents and too stupid to check the web site before we went and Trout loves to draw and would have loved it and we felt like shit. But I got to see the Green House exhibit before it closed and we got a couple of books that will help us build our dream Green house in the future.

I wanted to tell you Nemo has started crawling, this adorable sort of crawling where, instead of "walking" on his knees, he rises up on his toes, kind of like he's in Downward Facing Dog yoga position, and then steps forward, then drops to his knees. He has also learned how to sit up himself.

I wanted to tell you how Trout went to Mad Science camp all day all last week with all manner of new knowledge and love of science.

I wanted to tell you how Sunny has had some sort of potty regression, and is peeing and pooping all over the house. Sunday afternoon she came down and looked at us and said, "Well, I just peed on Little Man's bed, on his pillow." For whatever reason Little Man had come down and told us "Mom, Dad, I kinda, um, just peed in my pants." He slept on a sleeping bag on the floor on Sunday night. I am truly sick of other people's body fluids, and, um, other stuff.

But I can't. Because I have to tell you about a plate.

I have alluded to some of the marital problems that BDF and I are having, and they will continue to be allusions, but they do continue. They are not helped at all by the postpartum depression that I am suffering. Monday night, BDF and I had a monstrous fight. He tends to be antisocial in the best of circumstances, and when stressed he retreats, and at one point during the fight he told me he just didn't want to talk to me anymore.

So I retreated to the basement.

I sat, in the laundry room, crying, thinking, spacing, for more than an hour. I thought about cutting myself, something I've never done before and I have no idea why I was thinking about that, but I was, but I decided not to because I couldn't figure out where on my body I could do it where no one else would see, and I didn't want my daughters, or sons, either, but mostly my daughters, to ever see their Mom that way, so I didn't do it.

After a while BDF came down and invited me upstairs to talk, so I came back up and we talked. But it was bad timing and we were both still too upset about stupid shit we said to each other earlier in the evening, so we said some more stupid shit, some spectacular stupid shit, and I blew. Just exploded.

My brain was bursting, my heart breaking, shattering. I had to get the rage out before my heart literally broke. I ran down to our kitchen, where I wanted to grab a chair and throw it through the sliding glass door, but I didn't want to scare the kids that way, so I ran to the cabinet. I grabbed a stack of Corelle plates. One by one, I smashed them into the hardwood floor.

For plates that are supposed to be difficult to break, they exploded in dramatic, spectacular fashion, tiny shards of glass flying everywhere. Bam! Smash! One, two, three, four. Then I smashed Trout's special plate.

I smashed Trout's plate.

She has her own plate. She picked it out herself at the Corning outlet.

I sat on the floor, in my nightshirt and underwear, surrounded by thousands, maybe millions, of tiny shards of glass, barefoot, bleeding in a couple of places where shrapnel flew up and hit me, and sobbed. What the hell had I done?

I smashed Trout's plate.

And I broke my own heart, all over again.

I wailed until I couldn't wail anymore. I hated myself.

Then I picked myself up, made my way through the minefield of broken glass, grabbed the broom and dustpan, and cleaned it all up. I found slivers of glass everywhere, in my houseplants, on the counters, embedded in the side of the trash can. I swept, I vacuumed, and I wept.

I went to bed at 4 am. I got up at 7:30, and I vacuumed and cleaned some more. I didn't want my babies cutting their feet when they came in for breakfast.

Trout got up before anyone else. Oddly enough, she and Little Man had slept through the entire carnage of the night before. I confessed what I had done.

I explained that I wasn't mad at her, and I loved her beyond reason, and I cried some more as I told her I am sorry. So very, very sorry. And you know what she said?

"That's okay, Mommy, we can get a new one. It's okay, Mommy."

Her forgiveness broke my heart into shards once again.

Yesterday morning, I called my OB to get a referral to a new therapist. Last night, I saw her. She did her official diagnosis. Postpartum depression. She says she can help me. She can help me help myself.

Because I never, never want my children to have their hearts broken into shards because of me.

Fear of Flying

When I was seven years old, my grandfather took my sister and me down to Orlando to stay with my aunt and uncle, who were camping in Fort Wilderness in Disney.  My Aunt and Uncle drove down, I think, but my grandfather flew my sister and me, and the wonderful thing about being seven is that you are largely oblivious.  Blissfully, wonderfully oblivious.  I knew it took a while to get going, and about halfway through the flight I asked my grandfather to let me know once we'd taken off, because lacking the evidence to the contrary, I was fully convinced that all of the coloring and eating I was doing was while the plane was still sitting on the runway waiting to take off.

I didn't take another flight until I was 20 years old.  My college basketball team earned its way into the NCAA tourney, and the boosters flew the pep band out to support the team.  It was a fairly quick flight from Baltimore to Dayton, and while I was nervous I was largely distracted by my boyfriend at the time, who had stayed at the wild party that I made him take me home from and drank himself nearly to death the night before and who I was pretty sure was still drunk the next morning.  I was pissed at him and concerned for his welfare and knew he really should have been in a hospital rather than on a plane, but at that age I lacked the wherewithal to do anything about him.  But I digress.

In my former life as a technical writer for a large contractor working for government clients, I had to fly a few times for business.  The first set of flights was all the way across the country, from DC to Washington State, and I handled them just fine - I read mostly.  I was a bit nervous but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle.  About a year later I took a trip to San Francisco.  By this time I had "specialized" into supporting a group who did emergency planning.  The funny thing is that when you spend all day thinking about potential disasters it tends to skew your perception a bit, but you don't notice it until it interferes with how you live your life.

The trip out to San Francisco from DC was fine.  I sat next to the co-worker who was attending the meeting with me, an ex Army colonel who also had a master's degree, I think in physics or something, and who used to work for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  He noticed my unease on the plane, so he kept me distracted by explaining to me what every single motion and noise and movement meant, what the plane was doing, and embellishing a bit by describing what would be done if a particular part failed.  While not really comforting, it worked for distraction purposes, and I made it out to the west coast if not happy about flying, then able to accept it as a necessary evil and able to cope.

The flight back to DC was in two legs - SF to Dallas/Ft. Worth, and there on to DC.  The flight from SF to DFW was fantastic.  The plane itself was only 3 weeks old, and we knew this because the captain was just tickled as all hell to be flying a brand spanking new plane and he told us so.  He also acted as a tour guide, getting on the intercom every few minutes, it seemed like, to tell us about a particular geographical feature, or the weather, or where we were.  It was fantastic.

We had to switch planes in DFW, and we switched that brand spanking new plane for Nasty Rusted Ready for the Scrap Heap plane.  It was awful - the thing had to have been 30 years old or more and I think it had its original upholstery.  Some of the seats had tears covered up with duct tape, and it was noisy as hell.  The captain never talked to us once.  DFW was experiencing windshear, so just taking off was a little hairy by itself.  The captain never turned off the seat belt signs, and we bounced around all over the place towards DC.

After quite a while of this, the flight attendant got on the intercom and told us that we were about 25 minutes outside of DC and that they "needed to advise you of a situation."  My first thought was that it was odd that we were 25 miles outside of the city because I hadn't felt the plane descending at all, and my second thought was "Wait -- a situation?  What kinda situation?  We don't need a situation.  OMG we're going to crash.  There's a bomb.  We're hostages.  What are we going to do?  We're going to die."  The flight attendant told us that a member of the crew heard a noise on takeoff and that they think it was just some cargo shifting, but to be on the safe side, emergency crews would be meeting us on the ground.

It was my first real understanding of the cliche about it being so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.  This was just a couple of months after the crash of a US Air 737 in Aliquippa, PA.  Everyone was understandably frightened.  A few people began softly praying in the front of the plane, a child started screaming, and I think I probably turned about six shades of white.  My thought process went something like this:

There was a crash last month.  The last thing they're going to do is tell us the truth about what they think is going on because they don't want us to panic.  They're going to minimize the problem.  We're going to crash.  And die.  It's going to hurt.  We're going to die.

I think I was gripping the armrests kinda tight - I had the window seat and there was an older gentleman with the aisle seat with his wife sitting across the aisle from him.  He started to tell me all about how they had travelled all over the world, into third-world airports, and this wasn't a big deal, that he had flown in all kinds of circumstances, and how "if you're going to crash, Dulles is a great airport for that, because it was built to handle that sort of thing."  WTF?  I think the stony glare I shot him told him he wasn't helping any.

One of the flight attendants noticed my duress and told me that they thought they might have blown a tire on the landing gear, but it was okay because we had three others on which to land.  That just reinforced my opinion that they were lying to us and that we WERE.  GOING.  TO.  DIE.

It was the weirdest landing ever.  It was very cloudy, so cloudy that I couldn't see the red light on the end of the wing that I was sitting over, and we never really did feel like we were descending much.  It was like we were up, up, up, up, then down.  No gradual descent.  Someone told me later that it sounded like it was an automated landing.  They had told us to brace for a bumpy landing.  We were enmeshed in this fog of white cloud - and then all of a sudden we were on the gound and there were bright lights everywhere, the flashing red and white orbs of the emergency equipment that was all over the place.  Nothing else was around.  It was surreal.  The landing was bumpy, but obviously successful.  I nearly peed myself with relief.

We never did find out what exactly the problem was.  As I was leaving the plane I saw the pilot still in the cockpit, bent over like he was looking under the dash of a car.  I was accustomed to the pilot greeting the passengers as they left the plane and shaking hands.  We never met the pilot.

I went home and went on with my life, and then I had to fly to San Antonio for another work conference.  Our entire group of 8 people was going on the same flight, at the ungodly hour of 5 am out of BWI.  My project leader picked me up at 3 am to get to the airport on time.  I was dreading the trip, but I thought it was more me not wanting to be away from BigDaddyFish than it was the trip itself.  I was oh, so wrong.

I was well prepared - I had plenty of books to keep me occupied, plenty of water to drink, and some dramamine to help me not feel queasy.  We went through security, got our passes, and when they called us to board I grabbed my carry on and followed my coworkers down the ramp to get on the plane, and promptly ran into an invisible wall.  My feet refused to function.  I could NOT force myself to step foot on the plane.  I had no idea why, but I couldn't.  Unfortunately, my co-workers noticed and yanked me on board - if I had been by myself I simply would have turned around and gone home.  I proceeded to have a meltdown instead.

I was the proverbial basket case.  I cried much of the time.  My project leader gripped my hand and tried to distract me, but I still startled at every movement and noise, and I left nail marks in her hand.  I said 5,836 Hail Marys.  I behaved like a terrified child.  It was awful.  I was embarrased.  Humiliated.  Mortified.

I was convinced that since our entire group was going on the same plane we were sure to crash, wiping out the whole group.  Stupid, huh?  Except that one of my co-workers missed the flight, supposedly because he forgot his ticket, but I had seen it and him in the boarding area.  We were a bunch of emergency planners - I'm absolutely certain to this day that he did it on purpose.  I wish I'd known because I think it would have made me feel a bit better.

Word about my distress got around at the conference, which meant everyone tried to help me by telling me all of their bad flight/turbulence/scary landing/near miss stories.  Just what my vivid imagination needed.  To this day I have no idea how I got back on the plane to come home - I've blocked it out.

My boss never did ask me to travel anywhere else that required a plane trip to get there.  I've taken all sorts of train trips and driven all up and down the east coast, but no planes.  Since September 11 it's been a lot easier to tell people I don't fly - most think it's because of 9-11, but for me, that just sealed the deal.

So why am I telling you this?  Because I'm trying to find a way to get Nemo and me to Chicago in July for BlogHer without flying.