AJ took me flying today...the first time I've ever flown with my #One&Only at the controls!

I've always been a bit of a nervous flyer, probably because the first time I was ever in an airplane was back in the mid 70s---after being in a 28-car chain-reaction accident, caused by a blinding whiteout during a February snowstorm sweeping in off of Lake Ontario, on an expressway in downtown Toronto--in which the car was totaled. With no luggage other than the cardboard boxes and grocery bags holding my clothes in the trunk of the car, it was a bumpy, turbulent flight in near blizzard conditions from Toronto to Cleveland. The flight was only about 30-35 minutes long, but it was rough. After a scary landing on icy runways, the passengers were so relieved to be on the ground that everyone on the plane applauded, and shook the captain's hand as we left the aircraft.

Since that memorable introduction to flying, I've only flown a few times. A flight to Dallas here, a couple of flights to Florida there. A helicopter ride over Niagara Falls, a plane ride through the Grand Canyon, a "discovery flight' in a small plane at a rural festival...each of these 20 years or more ago.

So I'll admit I was a little nervous yesterday and last night. And this morning. Luckily, I had other things to worry about to occupy my mind today...my hot water tank died an ugly death over the weekend, and the plumber was scheduled for this morning to replace it and collect a check that should allow him to keep his yachts and Rolls Royces for another year.

It wasn't a beautiful day, but it wasn't bad for Ohio in January. Overcast, 28F / -2C, with very light winds.

A watched Andrew do his pre-flight check of the Cessna 172. He was thorough. I made sure of that! He got me situated in the back seat of the 4 seater with a headset, mic, and my camera. He and his instructor went over the checklist, and AJ made the radio call to announce that he was about to take off.

Being in a plane with one propeller and an interior less roomy than a mini-van is a LOT different than flying on a Boeing 737. We taxi out to the far end of the 3000' runway. We pause, checking gauges, scanning the skies. AJ and Tim both look back at me and I give a thumbs-up.  The noise ramps up fast...now impressive acceleration...a little bumpy, like being in a loaded pickup with no shocks...pull back on the yoke...suddenly the ride smooths out...we're up! The airport building drops away quickly. For a couple of minutes I know where I am...there's I-71 disappearing south into the hazy distance...the hospital...the truck stop I used to park my rig at ten years ago...Chippewa Lake. It looks like an HO train layout down there. I can see cars and semis on the interstate, but it's hard to tell they're moving. At 2500 ft / 760m altitude, we're slimming the bottoms of the clouds. The view looks almost like an old black & white TV...with the trees bare, the ponds and lakes frozen, and the barren farm fields covered in a couple of inches of snow, everything is shades of whites and grays, dark greens and dark browns, with an occasional red barn roof or bright yellow schoolbus.

But it's a cloudy day, and without being able to see the sun, I'm quickly lost. I pride myself on a great sense of direction, but it's suddenly gone. Even though I'm pretty familiar with this area, I have no idea where we are, and I won't again until about 90 seconds before we land back at Medina an hour later.

We fly southwest to tiny Ashland airport, where we bank hard to line up on the runway. A landing (my least favorite AND most desired part of any flight), a taxi around to the other end, a takeoff, and off we go to the east toward Wayne County airport, where we repeat the procedure. We fly over Skypark in Wadsworth, a community built as an airport, where the houses have not only garages for their vehicles, but hangers for their private planes; where the driveways lead out to the runways, and your front "walk" may be part of the taxiway.

After a flight of about an hour, we approach Medina again, and it's only at the last minute that I was able to realign my "inner compass", finally recognizing the roads we we flying over.

It was good to be on the ground, but it was sure an enjoyable flight. I can't wait to go up again when the farm fields are a rich green and the ponds and skies are summer blue. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been as special if a stranger would have been in the pilot's seat. The excitement of flying was almost overwhelmed by the pride I felt sitting in the back seat, watching AJ taking command, making radio calls, working the controls...and living his dream.

Christmas isn't really any fun this year. Older and divorced, with a 20 year old son with his own life, we didn't even decorate this year--no tree, no lights. Just a wreath on the door and a few Christmas cards over the fireplace. There's only about four hours a day that we're home and awake, and no one is here to see decorations anyway. And if someone puts them up, someone would also have to take them down. As my Mom says, "Phooey on that." I'll just enjoy the efforts of other more ambitious and inspired neighbors.

I can't believe that this will be my 32nd Christmas in my own house...this house. And AJ's 20th. The 13th Christmas without Dad. And already my 2nd without MJ. I find myself dwelling much more on what I had than what I have, especially at this time of year.

I often think about Gramma S, my Mom's Mother, who passed away suddenly a week before Christmas when I was 13. Mom was out bowling that night on her league, and by the time she was reached and drove to the hospital, it was too late to say goodbye. Later, while cleaning out her room, we found the wrapped gifts Gramma had for us...I still have mine. Christmas was, and is still, a tough time for Mom, who has now lived almost a half century without her Mother.

I remember the time we took my Aunt Sylvia to church with the family on Christmas Eve. Our usual seat was in the front row of the balcony, overlooking the entire congregation, and everything was fine until it was time to sing the hymns. She threw her head back and with all her might she made the most joyful of noises straight from her heart. And Lordy what a noise it was...The notes she hit and hit hard were, until that night, completely unknown to mankind, and luckily she sang with her eyes closed, so she didn't see all the looks of shock and horror amongst the churched multitudes that evening. But the pastor was smiling (or was it a wince?) and us kids giggled uncontrollably for the duration. And I still get a laugh, even though Aunt Sylvie is long gone and it was at least four decades ago. Dad never invited her back to church the rest of her life.

There was the time Dad decided we should cut down our own Christmas tree. Off we went to a tree farm far out in the country. We trudged through the wet snow and mud until we found the perfect tree. We sawed it down, tied it on, and drove it home. Well, they look smaller out in the woods than they do in the house, and after a few more feet were chopped off, it finally fit. But the trunk had a nasty twist in it that wasn't obvious in the cold dusk out in the woods. It would not stand up straight...no, it would not stand up AT ALL. That year is still remembered fondly as "the Christmas that we tied the tree to the wall with ropes."

Another memorable tree atrocity was the year my folks discovered Spray-On Snow. It came in an aerosol spray can, but I think somebody didn't read the instructions. Or use common sense. Or both. It seems the best idea would have been to spray it on BEFORE the ornaments and lights were hung. That snow was some good stuff...to this day, almost a half-century later, it still permanently and quite obviously clings to those ornaments. (Looking back, knowing what I know now, alcohol may have been involved.)

Then there was the long-running dispute about tinsel application. Like most men, I was a clump-tosser, and that was pure unadulterated evil in my Mother's world. She could spend a whole evening carefully placing each strand, and usually did. Sometimes she'd act like she hadn't even bought any, and then she'd unearth it from her hiding spot and apply it the next day while everyone was at work and school. Then after the holidays, she just as carefully took it off, wrapped it onto cardboard, and saved it for the next year. (The savings must have really added up, likely reaching almost a dollar over the years!) Oddly, my wife inherited the tinsel-placement gene from my Mother.

(BTW, why do cats eat tinsel? That makes for a festive and sparkly holiday litter box, but also unpleasant surprises in shoes some mornings.)

In our house on Christmas morning, we each usually got one "big" gift, a few smaller gifts, and a lot of little stuff. So after we came home from church late Christmas Eve, Mom would make hot chocolate and bring out the cookies, and we were allowed to open one (and ONLY ONE) gift before being hustled off to bed. Naturally, the only gifts under the tree at that point were some of the small stuff. One year, I was intrigued by an oddly shaped package under the tree...couldn't figure it out. (Note to reader: Mom was a wrapping genius). I kept eyeballing that little package. Sis went first, and I don't remember what it was, but she screamed with delight. Then it was my turn...I carefully selected it....unwrapped it....and....huh??!! It was a roll of scotch tape. And at that hour arguing, whining, pouting, and foot-stomping did me no good at all. The rules were The Rules. I spent an unpleasant night in bed that Christmas Eve for sure. Probably came close to earning a last minute transfer from the Good Little Boy list to.....Oh the humanity.

But Christmases were always special. We always took the Rapid downtown to visit Santa and stand in the cold and snow to stare at the elaborate moving displays in the stores on Public Square. And we always took a drive to look at the lights in 'the rich part' of town. Dad worked hard at two jobs to provide for us, and memories of bicycles, HO trains, plastic models, science sets, record albums, and especially books are all still vivid in my mind, and many of those presents are still with me here in my house. And in my memory I can still hear the clinking of the crystal cups at the punch bowl in the middle of the Christmas table cloth, and I can smell the cookies and the pies and the chocolate cupcakes. I can see the windows all steamed and frosted up from the bread in the oven and the potatoes boiling and the ham baking and coffee forever percolating. I remember the melamine dinnerware and the anodized tumblers and the 'special silverware' and the kit-cat clock and the revolving forest fire lamp and the bed piled 2 feet high with winter coats and furs and men's hats. I recall the scent of Grandpa's pipe, Uncle Lee's cigars, and everyone else's cigarettes, and the entire house hazy from all the smoke. I can still hear the laughter of both Grammas, and Aunt Sylv and Aunt LaVerne, and the deep voice of Uncle Ray. I recall laughing myself to tears when Uncle Lee came over to The Kid's Table to warn us that we shouldn't eat the rye bread...those dark things in it were the petrified bodies of ants that completely infested the bread factory and had fallen into the dough. So there we little cousins sat, intently picking out all of the caraway seeds, determined to avoid a horrible death-by-ant for one more year.

The grammas and grampas and aunts and uncles and my Dad are all gone now, and most of the cousins are bald or gray-haired like me. A lot of them are already retired and have their own extended families to preside over, and most of us have lost touch over the years. The old photos have turned yellow, and the miles of old home movie film is so fragile I'm afraid to try to thread it through the old projector. But I really don't need to...almost everything I see, every Christmas song I hear, every scent I smell, reminds me of Christmases and people long gone.

And I realize too that I have far more Christmases past than I have Christmases future.

Last evening, the radio was on in the background as AJ and I went about our pre-Christmas business around the house.

We heard holiday music by Mariah Carey, Mannheim Steamroller, the Chipmunks, Faith Hill, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. We heard "Santa Baby" and "Gramma Got Run Over".  We heard "Barking Jingle Bells" and Elmer Fudd singing "B-b-b-b-blue Christm-m-m-m-as." We heard U2 and Springsteen and the Jackson 5.

The Christmas hits just kept on coming.

After a while, he wandered over to me and asked, in all seriousness,

Priest in Britain Advises Congregation to Shoplift

Monday, December 21, 2009

Yesterday, December 16th, AJ made his first solo flight. On a party sunny, 18°F/-8C morning, he achieved the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. He's loved airplanes and aviation since he was a toddler, and it's been the one constant, never-wavering interest in his life.

He began flight instruction several months ago, and there are still many more months of lessons and ground school, but with his flight instructor Tim and most of the personnel of the small airport, as well as his very proud mother watching from the ground, he took to the frigid air alone in the cockpit for the first time on that beautiful morning.

Today is my son's birthday. AJ turned precisely 20 years old just before sunrise this morning.

Time is a strange thing, isn't it? It seems so long ago...yet it seems like it was last week.

The world was still reeling from the fall of the Berlin Wall just days before. Oddly, that event seems like such ancient history, but it seems like only yesterday that MJ was experiencing contractions as we drove across the Innerbelt Bridge, and contractions on the elevator up to the sixth floor drove her to her knees. I remember the new 'birthing suite' she was put in, to simulate a homey atmosphere. Wallpapered in warm colors, with comfy overstuffed chairs and a mini kitchenette, it sported heavy oak doors on the cabinets hiding the equipment and supplies necessary for having babies and possibly saving lives. The memory is more clear in my mind that the house I worked in last Friday.

I remember her 30-plus hour labor. That allowed me time to explore the hospital, to go for walks outside in the cold clear air, to get my fill of what should be The Most World Famous Mashed Potatoes on Earth in the hospital cafeteria (especially awesome when dished out by sympathetic old large black ladies addressing me as 'Sweetie', between midnight and 5am), and even time to drive all the way home and back to reload on personal items and clothing for the duration.

I drove our silver Dodge Caravan...the first of many minivans, and I brought back our video camera...in those days it was the size of a small suitcase, had a battery as big as a shoe, and was so heavy it had to rest on your shoulder while filming.

I remember AJ being born, and thinking that 'this just ain't natural!!' I remember all the stories we had heard about what could go wrong, and quickly counting limbs, appendages, and facial features as he breathed the air of Planet Earth for the first time and was handed to his Mother.

Later in the day, he was brought to me to hold, and I carried took him out of the recovery room and down the corridor to one of the northwest-facing windows in a little alcove and showed him his new world. No goo-goo-gaa-gaa stuff--I talked to him like men talk to their sons......I showed him the stadium (now gone) in the distance where he would someday watch the Indians and Browns. I showed him Lake Erie to the north, and explained how huge it was and that someday he would swim or boat on it, and I told him that just over the lake's horizon was a whole different country where his aunt and uncle and cousin lived. I explained about the downtown airport we could see in the distance sitting on the shore of the lake, and told him about airplanes. I showed him the freeway that ran along the lakeshore and told him that someday he would actually drive a car on that road. I told him about cars and trees and the city and the snow flurries we were seeing, and his new world.

We talked to each other for quite a while, and I remember the awe and wonderment of the moment. I remember feeling the beginning of a new life, not only for him, but for me, too. Sometimes, even now, I still feel the wonder when I look at him doing something he loves.

Today as I walk around our house, the one we brought him home to, I simply cannot believe that he is twenty years old. I still see the growth chart drawn on a door jamb with the little lines and dates to record how tall he was growing. The Snoopy light switch cover is still in the hallway and shelves in the basement still hold toys and construction sets and boxes of Legos. A little baseball mitt and a red Radio Flyer wagon in the garage still look almost new, and the basketball still has air in it after over a decade. The backboard mounted above the driveway only needs new netting to be fully functional again. There is still a crack in the vinyl siding where a well hit baseball soared toward the sky, probably on the way to being a grand slam, World Series winning home run, except for that garage in the way 10 feet from home plate.

But our next-door neighbor Helen, who was the first to meet AJ when he arrived home, passed away years ago, as did Oscar, who used to stand in his front window giving AJ a double thumbs-up as we took the training wheels off his first 2-wheeler and rode (and ran) back and forth past his house. The old boat-anchor video camera is gone, replaced by one smaller than a pack of cigarettes. The huge maple tree in the front yard that used to shade AJ's playpen on glorious spring days had to go after it's roots invaded the sewer system, and even AJ's family is broken, with family feuds severing ties with cousins and aunts, and with his own Mother no longer living under his roof. I guess a lot of time really has passed.

Today AJ often does drive on that freeway along the lake. He's turned out to be a good driver...a little fast, but good. He did much of the driving on our way to Florida in fall, and almost all of the driving on the way home, and he did a great job driving us through Atlanta and all around Washington DC. And he sure does understand the way airports and airplanes work...One of his hobbies is aviation photography, he works at a small airport, and he is taking flying lessons, hoping to solo within the next few months. A career in some aspect of aviation becomes more and more likely.

He's a "good boy"...he's never been in an accident or gotten a traffic ticket, he hangs with a good group of friends, he's polite to women and older folks, he continues to educate himself, he manages his money well, and he takes care of his Mother's needs like lawn mowing and snow shoveling...mostly without complaint. In spite of the crash and burn of his parent's marriage during his teens, he has weathered the storm and is moving forward with his own life.

Back in 1989 I was worried about the kind of world we were bringing him into. And the world has sure changed since then, hasn't it? And not necessarily for the better. But he seems to be prepared to face it as it comes. I think he's going to do just fine.

He is a surely a son to be proud of.

Happy Birthday, Andrew.

Love-- Your Dad.

The town I live in was, for over 90 years, once world-famous for it's sandstone. During the 1800s, sandstone from these quarries built the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, the public library and Palmer House in Chicago, the City Hall of St. Louis, and the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. Grindstones were shipped from here to all corners of the US and across much of Europe. Dwindling demand for sandstone and the Great Depression closed the last of the quarries in the 1930s. Just before WWII, the land was acquired for the creation of parkland, and today people from around the region enjoy our parks, swimming areas, fishing, picnicking, and hiking and biking trails. The area abounds with wildlife and is along one of the important flyways for migrating birds and waterfowl.