My mom isn’t perfect. She had an affair with a married man—her boss. I don’t think Mom ever asked Karl to leave his wife for her, but I also don’t think she expected him to turn on her so adamantly when she ended up getting pregnant with me. A few months into her pregnancy, Mom left her assistant job without even a reference.
There were times during my childhood when Mom would rant about the unfairness of the corporate system and how it always favored the men in power. How she’s glad she never got her MBA, because what good would it have done her? Then there were days that she would come home excited about a new job in a new company with great pay and benefits and health care. She’d thank Sally and Sam for their help, hand in her resignation, and promise to stop by the diner occasionally for a meal and to say hi.
Then a few weeks later, she’d be at Cornfield’s, asking for her job back.
Something about working in an office with a male boss would flip a switch in her mind. Even if her immediate supervisor was a woman, the knowledge that somewhere, a couple positions higher, there was a man who held her fate in his hands, would dig at her. Mom’s one terrible experience stole her ability to function in the corporate world she once wanted to climb to the top of.
Eventually, she stopped applying to those jobs. She never talked about working anywhere other than the diner. Instead, she chose smaller, more manageable dreams to focus on.
Like saving up enough money to buy this house.
Moving in with the woman she loves.
Selling the plants she grows at a farmers market.
On the way to the bathroom, I grab my toolbox, heaving the bulky container with two hands as I shuffle down the hall. Once I set it down on the outdated tiled floor, I seek out my headlamp, because the problem I’m working on is a faulty light. Dorky headgear in place, Iset to work. With steady hands, I unscrew the light switch cover while trying not to compare myself to my mother.
I don’t want a switch in my mind. I don’t want this one bad instance to ruin my dream of becoming a pilot.
So…what if I go up just one more time?
My hands pause on the wires.
Could I go uponemore time?
“Just to make sure I’m not afraid.” When I speak the idea out loud, a quiet murmur to myself, it sounds perfectly reasonable.
I could manage to find the time and deal with a guy who thinks I’m annoying in order to be sure the possibility of becoming a pilot is open to me when I finish paying Shawn back. To be sure I don’t freeze up and become the girl who can’t handle the pressures of flying.
Just one more time.
Excitement thrums through me at the thought—at the permission I’ve given myself to be a touch selfish. Guilt follows soon after at the self-centered reasoning, so I force myself to focus on the electrical work, which luckily is a simple loose wire that needs to be screwed back into place.
After packing up my tools, stowing them in the hall closet, and turning the power to the bathroom back on, I grab my phone and shut myself in my bedroom. Over the years, I’ve made the space mine, peeling off the patchy wallpaper and painting the walls a light blue that makes me think of the sky. The furniture is from yard sales and flea markets, but I picked each piece myself. And the single bookshelf has my annotated book club novels next to memoirs and biographies of some of the best pilots ever to have lived.
I never strove to be some famously talented flyer.
All I’ve wanted is to simply be a pilot.
Just one more time.
My uniform still hangs off my laundry hamper, and I dig thenapkin with George’s number out of the back pocket. After pondering what to say to a man who doesn’t like me but is willing to help me, I keep the text simple.
Me:Hello. This is Beth Lundberg. Thank you for your offer. I’d like to accept if any of these days and times work for you:
Then I list off the hours I’m not scheduled at the diner. Looking at those times, I’m once again queasy with shame.
I could be working then. Earning more.
I go to toss my phone on the bed, not expecting a response anytime soon, but then my phone buzzes in my hand.
George:A week from Tuesday. 10AM.
I stare at the day and time, not fully believing that I’m seeing it. The next time I’ll be in the air.
Before yesterday, I’d only ever been in a plane once.
Some part of me was convinced if I was lucky I’d get to experience the joy every few decades.
