Holding Hands

My mom doesn’t hold my hand on the airplane anymore.

Not during taxi, takeoff, turbulence or touchdown.

When I was younger she would reach her hand back through the gap between seats, 

open and close it like a blinking light, 

waiting for me to grab on.

I would take it, sighing.

I just wanted to play on my iPad.

The wheels would lift into the sky and I would let go.

I would drop her hand like a banana peel into the trash and go back to my video game.

I was seven, eight, nine, ten.

I didn’t need anyone holding my hand.

But now I’m fourteen.

And when I walk down the jetbridge and the pretty flight attendant asks me “What’s in Boston?”

She means, “Why are you alone?”

I say simply, “School.”

She opens her eyes wide and says, “Wow.”

Her eyes are a mix of awe, admiration, pity. She doesn’t know what to think. I’m so young.

I wish I was walking down the jetbridge with my mom,

so no one would have any reason to wonder at all why there is no one there to hold my hand.

And when I buckle my seatbelt and sit alone, watching my home slip away, getting smaller and smaller, all I feel is nothing in my palm and I wish for the familiar weight of my mother’s hand.

But it’s worst when the plane shakes. 

When it wobbles and bounces and bumps through the air and veers off course. 

When I don’t know what to do. 

When life doesn’t go the way I expect or anticipate or desire.

When I feel soul crushingly lonely.

When it’s not smooth sailing.

When I fight with a friend, and I can’t even tell my mom about it because I don’t have walls in my room.

And even though I’m looking at her face through the screen and I'm surrounded by my friends on all sides I still feel like I’m alone.

When I feel like I am going to die, even though you are statistically more likely to die in a car crash than in an airplane,but the plane is still shaking and if the plane goes down,

If it crashes into a field, or a forest, or into the cold churning sea as we land,I will die alone.

Alone in the very last seat in the whole plane.

I will die without my mom and the last thing she will remember of me is me walking away from her. 

Me not looking back and walking down the jetbridge without her beside me, holding my hand.

But the thing is, I never die.

The plane always lands.

The shaking always stops.

I always make up with my friend.

And I always step into Boston Logan Airport a tiny bit stronger then I was back at MSP.

Because I’ve learned that, in the words of Miley Cyrus, I can hold my own hand.

And a few weeks later, my mom is still at the end of the jetbridge, waiting for me when I come home.

My mom looked at me last week and said, “Bibi, I want you to know that if I died tomorrow you would be fine. Because I’ve given you everything you need to succeed in life.”

And she was right.

Who doesn’t crave the feeling of safety and the absence of worry that accompanies the presence of your parents?

Just because I flew away doesn’t mean I won’t always love to hold hands with my mom.

I just don’t need it.

When I was thirteen, I flew away to boarding school.

I flew where no one in my family, 

no one in my school, 

no one in my neighborhood, 

had ever gone before.

I could lie and say I never looked back at the easy, simple, boring life I could have had if I stayed at home for high school, but one can’t help but wonder.

But the thing is, for every bout of turbulence on the flight that is my life, there is infinitely more chasing the sun across the sky, drinking cold ginger ale, and watching wonderfully terrible airplane movies.

For every tear shed over a math test there are DoorDash picnics on the circle, whispered secrets, and the laughing so hard you feel like your stomach is going to split open.

And even when my plane is shaking, it’s still soaring.