My Irrational Fears are Now Life for So Many

I arrived in Kailua/Kona the afternoon after the tsunami did.  Thank God for that.  I should have been on Mauai the night it hit, but another flight attendant asked if I would trade trips with her.  Since her trip was shorter than my own I jumped at the chance to spend more time at home with my boys.  She ended up spending the night with dozens of other evacuated hotel guests crammed into a school bus in a parking lot while the tsunami sirens wailed menacingly throughout the night.  I can only imagine she was kicking herself all night long for the trade.

But what she doesn’t know is that she probably saved me from a full blown panic attack.  Those of you who know me well know that when my oldest son was born I developed a few irrational fears.  One was a fear of flying, or more accurately, of crashing.  Go figure, considering my choice of career.  Another was of being swallowed up by a tsunami.  Actually, it was more specific than that.  It was that I would be trying to outrun a tsunami while carrying my baby.  And then when my second son was born, it was the terror of not being able to run with both a toddler and a baby in my arms, and having one or both of them swept away from me.  Or maybe having to choose between the two of them.  You moms must know what I mean.

In any case, I took six years off from flying, and we very, very rarely went to the beach.  Countless times Patrick would suggest the quick 90 minute road trip to picturesque Cannon Beach, and I would immediately shoot the idea down.  Why play Russian Roulette?  Better to be safe than sorry.  Let’s just turn the sprinklers on and let the kids run through them.  Worst thing I could picture in that scenario was a bee sting, which I felt I could handle.

But then one day I woke up to discover that most of these fears had somehow either dissipated over time, or had just suddenly vanished.  So I recently started back to flying, which I am able to do without giving too much thought to crashing.  I just smother the boys in hugs and kisses before I leave and tell them about a million times that I love them, and I’m so proud of them, and that I am always with them and loving them, even when they can’t see me, and that they are the nicest, smartest, most beautiful and perfect people I have ever known, and on and on until Hayden stops listening and wanders off to find his toys and Addison gets that exasperated look on his face and tells me enough already, we know, we know.

Being back at work pretty much goes hand in hand with going back to the beach, as so many of the places that we fly now are coastal.  So it was a good thing my fear of tsunamis seemed to have diminished.  With the exception of good old Fairbanks, everywhere that I have had a layover has been very near, if not completely, ocean front.

Our van driver took us through Kona, and we were able to see first hand the chaos that a mere foot of water could cause.  Furniture had been pushed through the windows of buildings and out onto the street.  Sidewalks and roads were torn up as though a hundred jackhammers had simultaneously pounded the pavement.  Trees were uprooted.  Debris was in the most unlikely of places.  But it was all so little compared to the devastation that must be Japan.  I cannot even begin to imagine …..

So tomorrow and the next day I will be on Maui.  And now I feel a fear developing in the pit of my stomach, and making its way to the back of my throat.  This time it’s of exploding nuclear plants and the resulting radiation making its way from Japan to the islands.  Irrational, I know, but also a horrible reality for so many as I write this.  I’m keeping quiet about that, though.  Addison already has developed a fascination/fear with the earthquake in Japan and the resulting ‘salami’.

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