Taking Flight

October 11, 2010 by Linda Bergeron.

By Linda Bergeron

This is all about change, and growth, and personal development. Ah, it can be a nice view in the rear view mirror of life.

I was a shy child, knew that I was loved, and had the fortune of a solid, enjoyable childhood with both parents and a sister. I grew up in a modest home with my needs met, and nice surprises. (Dad liked to celebrate birthdays by taking us to high-class restaurants requiring that we dress up, and Mom made sure that a couple of trips into the city for a Broadway show or two covered a few other celebrations.) There were aunts and uncles, cousins older than I, visits to others’ homes over the holidays.

Importantly I think, all the oldsters had lived their childhoods and adolescent years through the Great Depression, so having plenty to eat, small gifts to give, good jobs, homes, and good times together were occasions that were full of stories, jokes, many, many smiles. They were thankful for all they had and their lives showed it.

I was a watcher. I was hugged and entreated to join in. I warmed up slowly and smiled and ate, and lapped up the goodness of ‘family’ like a happy pup.

School was a challenge, but I strived to do my best, and winced when I heard another oral report announced. Dad had finished the ample attic of our Cape Cod house into a bedroom each for my sister and I, and sitting in the seat of the front dormer was a favorite reading place for me.

Mom and Dad were fine models of affectionate parents. She took care of the house, had us girls do dishes, clean our rooms, hang laundry; she worked part-time when we were older; enlivened our home with her sewing, crochet, and painting. Dad loved his drafting work in an office with a friendly mentor Sam; always had a building project in the works, with wood, or concrete or something; took the small downstairs bedroom for his den (why he built those upstairs rooms, of course); was up late working on his book, about a math higher math than I could understand as an elementary student. He loved the yard, the woods, driving to beautiful places, and camping. The out of doors was his church, he said, and I loved his church.

They all accepted me as quiet and reserved, and egged me on as gently as they could. The unspoken family motto was that we were a unity of support for one another, and the blessing words were, “I love you.”

Then my sister became a teenager, Dad’s health got trickier, Mom got sick, my best friend of all time moved away, and Mom and Dad decided to sell our house and move too. She became very ill very fast; I was not told she was dying; I struggled with a new school and classmates (in the south) who were about two years further developed socially than I.

I could of course write an entire long book about my high school years, long marriage of challenges and how I emerged, divorced and raising a last child, alone, at 46.

Now you know my background, reader. I believe our childhood is like the foundation of our whole house – our beliefs, our ability to trust, that spiritual knowledge that we grow up with (or without). That beginning is what we fall back on when life throws us fast balls, or when we make horrendous mistakes and have to scramble back to an even road. It’s what we have for answers in the middle of the night when our first child is very sick, or when a letter in the mail changes a day from normal to unthinkable. It is the great underlying realm that we view our world from (even as we dream), our lens that, over time, we learn to polish and aim and carry at our sternum from which we look and look and look.

I did not mention that I was a fearful child - only learning to ride a bike at age fourteen because I was afraid of falling, avoiding ladders and cliff edges because I was afraid of heights (Mom had vertigo), afraid to speak up because listening was so much more interesting, and my inner voice always so much more dependable. I grew in manageable, safe areas, but it was very slow.

Even as an adult I had never traveled alone. I was in my fifties, and my sister (the first-born, independent, very traveled person) was visiting from the great diagonal line of Florida to Oregon in her van. She would be driving back soon and I suddenly wanted to travel with her. We made the plan that we would drive away together, stop in Salt Lake City overnight, and I’d catch the short air flight hop back to Boise, and home. It was a perfect first time: a short flight, great plane ride, do-able. And done! I definitely felt that leap of growth.

Next time, only a few years later, we planned a reunion on the east coast to visit relations. We would travel up through the states in my sister’s van, and I’d fly in to join the trip in Raleigh, NC and, at travels’ end, fly back home in the west out of Washington, D.C. This was a much longer ride, and when all was done, and I had a full journal and many photos of this memorable trip, I felt like a woman of the world, capable of all kinds of things.

Then last year, after my oldest son had waited several years for me to take him up on his invitation to visit him in Alaska, I did. It was a marvelous flight along the coast with a window seat where I could view all the bays, the long line of cresting waves far below, the wondrous view upon the marriageable terrain to ocean world.

I knew there was an offer in Denali Park for a guest trip in an eight-seater, two-engine plane that was ‘flight-seeing’ around Mount McKinley and the giant world of huge sloped valleys, highways of glaciers, braided riverbeds and crusted peaks of snow in clouds. I said Yes to this, was appropriately nervous the day of, but followed through, finding myself in no less than the co-pilot seat for a grand escort and fear left behind on the ground.

Imagine me, doing these things? My sister, my daughter, this eldest son – they all know me, have known me through the years, and see me now. See the pictures that I could only have taken from where I truly sat! (And my son was in the rear of the plane, so he really saw me get on and off.)

The adventure of life is available each day. It was there when I struggled with feeding and caring for young children, and my concern about what they learned and how they felt. It was there, inherent and strong as ever, when I felt the onslaught of obstacles and cried and would have beat my chest if it had done any good, learning lessons, getting through it.

Adventure lives as I read a wide array of history and commentary and feel the strands of understanding catching to one another, and having conversations of discovery and insight with another who reads, late at night.

I think I learn the most when I stand outside listening to the morning; sometimes it is silent and I wait for that one bird that may call from afar. Traveling in a solo rhythm over miles, beside rivers, paralleled by crags and wild growing things and the flow of thoughts that arise as I, in the present and moving forward, carry my history, the ancestor spirits alive in me, and the wherever that I am moving toward.

If the moment is blessed, the eagle will let you see him, or the formation of the rock will be alive to your eye and the feeling that comes to you.

It has been pointed out to me that the eagle is so revered because he can go higher than any person can, that in his lofty world he can linger on the current of air, relaxed and beautiful, that his eyes can see further, of the wide and rounding view of earth, and if we imagined ourselves looking out from his eyes, we could see far also.

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