Leaving On A Jet Plane

The area around my hometown of Joplin, Missouri is commonly referred to as The Four States because four states (Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas) are within a 50-mile radius of Joplin. My parents would take my sister and me all around those four states-a dinner at Chicken Annie's in Kansas, to the Beaver Lake in Arkansas and shopping in Oklahoma. The only plane ride I had ever taken until I was in high school was on a little four-seater that we just took up for a little spin around...you guessed it...The Four States. While still in grade school, I started complaining that I had never been out of The Four State area. My parents took the hint and loaded my sister and me up for summer trips to South Dakota, Canada and Colorado. Those road trips were nice, but I yearned for the glamour of flying. I doubt my parents ever thought their shy, sheltered little girl who they tried to keep confined to The Four States would grow up to live in a city halfway across the country that required a plane or two to get her home.

At this point in my life, I've been flying in big planes (planes with more than four seats) to places other than The Four States for over 10 years, and I've lost count of how many flights, connections and delays there have been. I'm no frequent flyer, but I take to the friendly skies several times a year, sometimes to visit friends, occasionally for work, but mostly to get back home, ironically to that Four State area I so desperately wanted to fly away from when I was younger.

The more a person flies, the more stories or mishaps they are going to have. I'm no different. I've encountered most standard flight annoyances (cancelled flights, lost luggage, crying babies) and some rare ones (emergency landing due to a fire on the plane, sitting on the tarmac for over seven hours in the December New York City snow). At the end of an uneventful excursion, I'm always grateful and wonder if I'll be quite so lucky the next time because the more a person flies, the more mishaps they are going to have. I bought my ticket for my flights home for Christmas just a few short hours ago, and as excited as I am to be heading back to my family I cannot help but wonder what trouble I might have while trying to get there. I'll take an aisle seat with a side of uneventful.

2023 Highview

Growing up, I wanted to move to a different house so badly. All the other kids at school seemed to have moved to new houses during our elementary school years, and, of course, I wanted to be just like the other kids. It's not that there was anything wrong with our house or neighborhood, but it wasn't new and exciting and you know how kids live for new and exciting.

There was one time and only one time that I can remember my parents flirting with the idea of uprooting our family to a new location. I must have been eight or nine years old, and the very few details I do recall are my dad was the one desiring a change of address, the one house we looked at was located a few miles south of town and it had enough bedrooms so that I could have had my own. I don't remember why my dad wanted to look at the house and not sure why nothing ever came of it. The thought of a new place to explore, get settled into and make my own thrilled me, though, and when I left for college from the same house my parents had brought me home from the hospital when I was days old, I felt a bit disappointed I had never got to experience all those things that come with a move.

Ten years after graduating from high school and heading to college having had many moves under my own personal belt (at least eight different places within 5 years of college, 2 semesters studying in Europe and 4 years in New York City), I was home for a few weeks prior to moving into my new apartment in Brooklyn. I could have stayed in New York City on friends' couches before getting the keys to my new digs, but I chose to return to Missouri, to my hometown and to that same house my parents had raised me in. Gone were the days of hoping for a new home. After years of moving every few months or years, it was a relief and comfort to be able to head back to something familiar, cozy and...well, home. There had been minor changes in the 30+ years my parents had lived there - shag carpeting removed, a carport erected, landscaping redone - but, for the most part, this place was like walking into a time machine back to my youth. So, on that Sunday in May as my mom and I crouched in a closet with one of our dogs while one of the deadliest and largest tornadoes in American history blew our house away, I was not that young girl who wanted a new place to explore, I was a homesick young woman desperately clinging to her roots to keep her grounded.