Takeoffs are Inevitable

Takeoffs are inevitable, I think as I stow my polka-dot bag underneath the seat in front of me and fasten my seat belt. My mom is my sitting buddy, and before we sit down, I ask her if I can have the window seat so I can see the plane as it lifts up from the ground. I feel like I am twelve instead of twenty-two as I crane my neck to look outside. The plane gathers speed, tilts its wings upward, and lifts off, the whole world slipping away in one smooth glide. I glance over at my mom as we continue climbing. She’s clutching the armrest and chewing her gum wildly.

            “It’s okay, Mom,” I tell her. She’s afraid her ears will clog up.

I love plane rides. Lifting off the ground and leaving everything behind is so liberating. No wonder why birds seem so happy. I look out of the small, square window at all the cotton-candy clouds that stretch across the sky like fleecy mountaintops and think how beautiful the world is. The view inspires me to write a poem:

An endless snow scape is

Spread outside my window.

I crane my neck to see.

Wispy and billowing,

Cascading cotton.

The clouds hide you and me.

            It’s not the greatest, but it will do.

English is my major, and I am graduating this December. I try to write a poem about that too, but it’s not much better than my one about clouds. The ending line is the joke about how all English majors end up flipping burgers. With all the less-than-perfect poetry I’m thinking up today, I can’t help believing the joke is true. And it’s scary. I don’t want to be flipping burgers all day long with poems by Robert Frost going through my head about taking “the road less traveled.” Flipping burgers is not the road less traveled. Then again, someone has to take the worn-out path. We all can’t take the less traveled road or else it would become the more traveled road. Even though this is a good thought, it doesn’t make a career in the fast food industry any more appealing to me.

At any rate, it makes me think about what I’m going to do once I graduate, and suddenly the thought, takeoffs are inevitable comes to my mind. They’re inevitable because we all have to experience a lift off in order to get somewhere. I can’t help realizing that in less than two months I will be having one of the biggest takeoffs of my life. I will be slipping away from the college world I’ve known for the past four years and flying into something completely new and different. It would be nice if I knew I was flying into “wispy and billowing” clouds instead of endless hamburgers and fast food. But I don’t know, and the uncertainty makes my heart drop to my stomach like a paperweight.

My thoughts are disrupted as the flight attendants come down the aisle with ginger ale and Biscoff cookies that have “Delta” written in the left-hand corner in white. I take my gum out of my mouth and put it on the napkin right underneath the words, “Make every flight a delicious one.” I try composing more poems, but my heart just isn’t in it anymore. Where will I go once I have graduated? Where is my takeoff going to lead me?

Before I know it, the “fasten your seat belts” blinker comes on again, and the flight attendant announces that we will be descending.  As I buckle up, I suddenly think, landings are also inevitable. If you take off, you have to land somewhere too, don’t you? You just can’t hover in the sky forever. Despite the sinking sensation in my stomach from the descent, the thought lifts my heart. When I take off, I’ll have to land somewhere, and why couldn’t that somewhere be a good somewhere? After all, don’t you decide before you climb onto the plane where you will be landing?

Confidence and strength come to me as I realize that I’m not just going to take off blindly—I will take off with a destination in mind. And if I decide now that my takeoff is going to lead me somewhere I want to be, then why am I afraid? I am the pilot of my plane.

As we touch back down to the earth with a slight bump, I vaguely wonder if I’ll have a bumpy landing or if I’ll come in smoothly. But as I walk out of the plane into the new, unfamiliar place I have arrived at, I realize that all anyone can really do is jump on the plane and take off into the sky, believing they have the strength and ability to touch down to where they ultimately want to be.