Fear of Flight

Near Cowanesque Lake a couple weeks ago, my husband pulled the car over to the side of the road so that I could jump out and stare up at four soaring bald eagles, their wings unmoving as they dove and rose in the invisible currents generated by sun's warmth on the ground or by the interference of the hills to my left.

To soar like this, the very tips of their feathers on the very tips of their wings twist slightly, propelling them until the birds drop from the current, their large golden brown bodies becoming larger and larger to me as I stand wide-eyed underneath them, reaching one arm towards them as if I might have a chance to run my fingers over their feathers before they catch another current.

I know very little about how to fly.  In fact, ten years ago, after a flight to North Carolina from New York, as I gripped either side of my seat in terror during some bad turbulence, I vowed that if the plane stayed in the air long enough to get me home safely, I'd never  fly again.  And I haven't.  Like my sister says, "I've now promised my soul never to die like that."  Perhaps what she means by "like that" is thousands of feet over land, in the control of some combination of air currents, engines, pilots, and gravity without any of your own grip on your own fate.

Oh, how I have wanted to see the world since then, to fly to the places that have called to me--Denmark, France, Colorado, California, Canada, Kenya, Mali.  But the need to take part in my own flight, to steer myself through the currents has stopped me, may always keep me.

My only glimpse is the feeling I get when my chin is lifted so high into the air to watch the birds that I forget I am standing on ground.  When all you can see is sky, you can almost believe you are flying.

The eagles' wings rise in gravity but fall with the strength of their pectoralis muscles.  My own arms, so unlike wings, both stretching out into the sky now as I spin in circles, fall in gravity and rise in my own strength.  My husband climbs out of the car and I run over to him and jump on his back with excitement.  He spins me around.  "Do you see them?" I say.

He laughs and nods.

And then two of the eagles dive towards one another, their talons reaching, clasping the talons of the other, and as we watch, they begin to spin in a shared circle, bird over bird, as if they were one bird falling, falling, so fast that my mouth is open in awe.  Then they let go of one another and screech so loudly that it echoes out over the hill, and we are left with the tingling of our spines as they each catch their own current and depart from one another and then from us, leaving the skies empty.

The two birds were not mates though mates have been known to do this spinning dance in midair.  These were two males, one of them having flown too close to the shared circle of another pair.  This was a dance of dominance, and the shrieks were angry warnings.  Both males were stunning, and I am in awe of their brief encounter.  I turn to my husband and wish for a moment that he would do such a thing if another male came too close to our inner circle.  We are both still laughing excitedly.

My daughter wants to know if she will fly one day, and I always tell her that of course she will, that she can go anywhere she wants.  What I don't tell her is that she will have to learn to let the currents carry her and let go of the need to pilot herself, alone.

As I climb back into the car, I am still impeded by gravity, by how heavily I tread, cling to each step on the earth, each grip  of my hand on something steady and reliable.  I tell myself I am in control, but the birds remind me this is an illusion.

Five miles down the same road, we pull the car over for another pair of eagles, and I leap out of the car to the let the wind hit my face and blow my hair and so that I can stare so high for so long into the sky that I will forget, one more time today, that I am standing on solid ground while the eagles dip and dive, dip and dive, my arms spread out at my sides, my fingers feeling their own way through a current or two, as if they could be propellers.

Who knows.  Maybe one day I'll go with my dad to Kenya and see Kibera.  Maybe I'll go to Copenhagen and meet some of our family who live there.  The longer I watch the birds, the less I forget the fear that I cannot always be in control, that I won't be here forever, and not every current will take me home.

When all you can see is sky, you can almost believe you are flying.