Today’s writing prompt: What is something you would attempt, if you were guaranteed not to fail?
What wouldn’t I attempt? Without question, the biggest challenge I would tackle would be to become a pilot. The urge to travel and fly was in me from an early age.
At 17, I applied to be an airline stewardess with a small regional airline in the Eastern part of Canada. The rejection letter was partly disappointing and partly heartening. I was too young to be hired they told me. But they encouraged me to apply again when I turned 19.
As fate would have it, by the time I was 19, I had been accepted at university. That sealed my fate for the following four years and many years that followed. Still, I worked in a good deal of flying in those university years.
I travelled twice to Europe twice between academic semesters. At the end of third year, I spent a summer in Egypt on a student seminar with about 50 other Canadians.
Following graduation, I travelled to Asia and throughout Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. You may have read of my trek through the Himalayas .
My husband was a commercial airline pilot. The irony and suitability of our union has not been lost on me. While I was schlepping from country to country on this airline or another as a passenger, he was actually flying the planes. Our paths never crossed in those days but we laugh at the possibility that they certainly might have.
My husband was a pioneer in the age of commercial flight. He flew for Pan American World Airways for 20 years until its’ untimely demise in 1991. The death of that iconic airline marked a sea change in the history of aviation.
Pan Am set the bar for class, luxury and service. I marveled that prime rib roast was not only served at seat side in Pan Am’s first class section, but had been roasted in the airline galley. Passengers got to choose their preferred cut. The wine selection rivaled a 5-star Michelin restaurant. Caviar was a standard “appetizer.”
My husband tells stories of the many glamorous passengers he ferried back and forth across the oceans. Elizabeth Taylor. Maggie Smith (who hated to fly). Flip Wilson (funny as hell.) Duke Ellington (wore a dewrag.) Burt Lancaster (shorter than he looked onscreen).
In one poignant story about a stewardess he tells how excited she was to serve Rock Hudson in first class. But her heart quietly broke after sharing her excitement with her galley colleagues. It was only then she learned Hudson’s male travel companion was also his boyfriend.
I had heard of Pan Am off in the distance. Ephemerally. I never flew on it. As a Canadian, we had other choices for European and international travel. It is my loss. The Pan Am logo on the side of a 747 was an iconic symbol in countless movies and TV shows. My husband refers to the cockpit of a 747 as his “office.”
Pan Am stories still drift through the world and are recounted by many people we meet – whether travelers or employees, always recounted with a certain wistfulness and joy. Pan Am employees seemed to universally love working at Pan Am.
My husband’s stories are full of glamor and fun they had both on the aircraft and during layovers. Pan Am employees believed – it is said – that “the world is my oyster.” When Pan Am declared bankruptcy in 1991, and went out of business, some employees committed suicide.
There are still Pan Am clubs in many places where there are still enough ex-employees to justify them. There is a Pan Am museum in Florida. You can still buy Pan Am “merch” and memorabilia online.
Today there are many female commercial airline pilots. Had I been born later, I might have been one of them. My husband and I often talk about the unlikelihood of our meeting in the first place. It was on an online dating site, not a normal domain for either of us. I was in Canada. He was in the US.
Along with the mysteries of falling in love, we talked with familiarity about restaurants and sites we saw in Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Rome, Paris, Munich and many other international capitals. In one conversation, he finally gave up asking me which countries I had visited: “This might go faster if you just tell me which countries you haven’t visited.” It still makes us chuckle.
No chance of failure? I’d be in a flight simulator somewhere in a New York minute. I’d abandon a lot of other dreams to pursue the goal of becoming a pilot.
And who knows? I ain’t dead yet. The game isn’t over until the fat lady sings. Of course, that phrase means one should not presume to know the outcome of an event which is still in progress.
Which is – in this case – my life.
So we’ll see.
Expressive Compulsive 