southwest flight 4789

A profound thing happened to me yesterday.  On our plane back from Florida (more on that later), I thought we were going to die.  I wanted to share this story here because I think this event is going to have a lasting impact on my life and I want to remember it as well years from now as I do today.

Our flight from Orlando to Hartford took off normally at around 3 pm.  Jay was holding a sleeping Everett and I was trying to entertain Lena, but per norm, I was not feeling all that well despite my usual dramamine dosage.  About ten minutes in to the flight, you could hear a change in the octave and decibel of that constant noise you always hear while in the air.  I noticed some startled heads ahead of me but we did not hear anything from the cockpit or the flight attendants so we shrugged it off.  My sickness continued and I grew paranoid that there were no barf bags in any of our seat backs so I summoned the flight attendant with the call button and asked her for an air sickness bag for peace of mind.  A minute after she returned with some bags for me, the captain gets on the intercom and tells us we have to return to Orlando.  Groan.  Not only are we going to be delayed but I have to go through an extra landing and takeoff feeling like this?  Then he says something about a problem with the landing gear.  That doesn't sound so good but he doesn't say it's a problem.  A few minutes later, a distraught flight attendant speaks in the intercom very seriously - "Okay, we have about eight minutes to prepare you for an emergency landing . . . "  She goes on and on about all of the rules and I hear mentions of emergency doors and slides and smoke and fire, but I cannot really hear what she is saying - I'm not sure if it was because of other people's voices talking over her or my own mind thinking about what was happening.  She talks about the brace position.  They later walk through the cabin and reiterate how to do it.  Jay and I look at each other in fear.  You can see the fear on everyone else's faces around us.  Jay whispers that he loves me.  I think I whisper it back but I don't know because I am thinking about death.  They tell Jay how to hold Everett.  I frantically ask them what Lena should do.  They say she can stay seated as she is because she is lower down.  Lena has no idea what is going on and is her normal self.

A few minutes later, the flight attendants come through again and I hear one of them reassure a passenger behind us that it's probably fine, they just have to go through these protocols.  I look at Jay and I ask him, "Are we going to die?"  He seems different now, more calm, and he reassures me no, he really doesn't think so, they just have to go through these steps.

From this point on, I am hopeful that things will be fine

Jay puts the seat belt tightly on Lena and she starts crying that it's too tight.  We loosen it for a little while until the flight attendant comes back on the intercom and directs us it is time to get in the brace position.  Jay tightens Lena's seat belt again and she is crying and yelling, "It's too tight!" over and over again.  We try to distract her by singing a song from music class but it doesn't help.  Everett is crying now too because Jay is holding him so tightly.  I put my head down between my legs and hold on to Lena's legs as she cries.  The flight attendant is no longer on the loud speaker because she too has to sit but you can hear them all chanting to us, "Heads down!  Stay down!  Heads down!  Stay down!"  And I am holding my head down, wanting to look to see how far we are from learning our fate, but I listen to their chant that is so quiet without the intercom and so I keep my head down and hold on to Lena as best I can, and then . . . we hit the ground just like any other landing.  We come to a stop and there is cheering and clapping.  We all lift up our heads and you can see wet, red eyes all around.  They stop the plane on the middle of the runway and fire trucks and police cars come out to inspect it and it is fine.  They move us off the main runway and then inspect again.  The captain gets on the intercom and tells us that he received some warning about the landing gear at around 22,000 feet and never in 25 years of flying had he seen anything like that.  But he says he's a New Yorker and knows how to get things done.  I still don't understand what actually happened.  Everyone cheers for him.  Then they bring us to a gate and let us out into the airport.  They issue us new tickets for a flight a couple hours later and give us $200 vouchers for each ticket.

For about three minutes of that plane ride, before I was reassured by Jay and the flight attendant that things would probably be fine and thus had hope, I thought that we could very well crash and die.  During those moments, I wondered if it would hurt.  When they told us not to make calls or send texts, I wondered if I should send a text to my family to tell them I loved them.  I thought about how maybe they wouldn't want to hear that because that's something they already knew.  Rather, they would want answers to questions that they would always be asking themselves - Were we afraid?  Was Lena scared?  Did it hurt?  And they would be wishing they could have told me that they loved me during those moments because I was the one who needed to hear that the most, not them.  And then I was thinking about these two children between us.  There were not many other kids on the plane and they were definitely the youngest.  These two children were too innocent to know what was going on - all Lena cared about was that her seat belt was too tight - it's certainly better that way but it made me sad that she had no idea what could be coming.  And it made me sad that these two innocent kids would not get to live nearly as long as I did and that they would be in so much innocent pain, even if instantaneous.

But I had to power through my fears and focus on being a mommy so I could distract Lena with showing her pictures on my phone and asking her what she saw in them and singing her songs with my head between my legs.  At the end of the day, I had to calm down and be the mom.

When we finally got on our flight home, it was very calm.  Jay and I watched a movie while both kids slept on us and when it was time to put the computer away and get ready for landing, it was the first time I was left with my thoughts about what had happened that day and I had the most peaceful descent I've ever had on a plane.  It was cold and I did not have my sweatshirt on but I was uncharacteristically not cold.  I had to got to the bathroom but I didn't really feel it.  And I looked out the window the whole time which I do not do because it often makes me feel sick but I did not feel any sickness whatsoever.  I calmly looked out at the darkness and distant lights below us and I was at complete peace.

I am not going to say that I am lucky to be alive because in the end, we probably weren't close to dying.  But I am grateful to be alive because I did experience what it feels like to think you are going to die.  In the past 24 hours since that event, I stopped sweating the small stuff.  I'd like to say that will continue forever because of what transpired but I'm sure that it won't.  But at least I can relive this experience by reading this post and maybe that will help me ease up.

And just in case, I love you all.