stare, eventually inching their way up the driveway to ask what exactly he was building. Some conversations would last a couple minutes while others would take hours, with Dad giving a technical breakdown of everything he had built.
My father was not one to brag, but having an airplane on display is just asking for friendly Midwestern interactions. The people he spoke to were in obvious awe of what he had accomplished, and I imagine those conversations, the unbiased appreciation of outsiders, gave him the encouragement he needed to see his work through to the end.
I would meander into the garage from time to time, because I needed to ask Dad a question on my math homework or because I wanted to take the car, and it was easy to forget what I had going on back inside the house. I would climb onto his stool with the overstuffed leather cushion and watch him work. It was like getting sucked into one of those “Come Paint With Me” televised classes on PBS. When the wings were completely attached I would step on them to climb into the plane. It was a very comfortable place to read a book, or to just sit and think for a while.
If I happened to be outside when a new passerby stopped at our house to talk to Dad about the plane, he always made a point of introducing me. “This is Sarah. She’s my co-pilot. Been flying with me her whole life.”
I know he was proud of his plane. But I also like to think that some of the pride in his voice came from the way I chose to spend time with him, in his world, even as a teenage girl with better places to be than in a dusty garage with her Dad.
Before we would take the plane apart and bring it back to the basement or garage for presumably another year of work, Dad would always have a showdown between him and the plane. He would sit down in the grass or on the steps and just stare good and hard at his plane. I know that he was afraid he would never finish. He was afraid he was wasting all of our time and family money on something that would, in all likelihood, never make it into the air. Instead of seeing all that he accomplished he only saw how far he had left to go.
I can only imagine how overwhelming it was to build an airplane from scratch. There are hundreds of kits you can buy that would have produced an airplane in a fraction of the time it was taking Dad.
But Dad thought the kits were cheating. He was doing it the right way.
Sometimes I would sit beside him in the grass while he stared at pieces that he had worked so long and hard for.
“Hmmm,” he would murmur to himself, the noise carried past his lips on an exhausted sigh.
A daughter’s belief in her father can make anything possible. “It looks like a real plane, Dad.”
“You think so?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He would look at me. Or maybe he was looking to me. “I guess so.” His arm would wrap around me. “Do you think I’ll finish this thing some day?”
I would lean back into him in reply. Then we would stare a while longer, pilot and co-pilot, while the possibilities of the day settled all around us.
CHAPTER NINE
As Mom and I stared blankly at the weepy faces of your family, faces that held traces of your reflection that I wasn’t ready to see, I felt like I was in a room of strangers. No one knew what to say to Mom or I. No one wanted to talk about how you’d died or what we’d been going through before coming to Missouri. Worst of all, no one wanted to admit that your death hadn’t been real until we had arrived to Missouri without you. Seeing us would always bring a new shockwave of pain for your relatives. We would never come home again, David, Jan and Sarah.
Jan and Sarah. Could we ever be enough?
Mom was a widow. But what did that make me?
I realized that the people who had curled my hair, watched my dance recitals, read me stories, tucked me in, kept clay imprints of my handprints on their dresser were pulling back when I approached them. When I needed them the most.
Mike broke
My father was not one to brag, but having an airplane on display is just asking for friendly Midwestern interactions. The people he spoke to were in obvious awe of what he had accomplished, and I imagine those conversations, the unbiased appreciation of outsiders, gave him the encouragement he needed to see his work through to the end.
I would meander into the garage from time to time, because I needed to ask Dad a question on my math homework or because I wanted to take the car, and it was easy to forget what I had going on back inside the house. I would climb onto his stool with the overstuffed leather cushion and watch him work. It was like getting sucked into one of those “Come Paint With Me” televised classes on PBS. When the wings were completely attached I would step on them to climb into the plane. It was a very comfortable place to read a book, or to just sit and think for a while.
If I happened to be outside when a new passerby stopped at our house to talk to Dad about the plane, he always made a point of introducing me. “This is Sarah. She’s my co-pilot. Been flying with me her whole life.”
I know he was proud of his plane. But I also like to think that some of the pride in his voice came from the way I chose to spend time with him, in his world, even as a teenage girl with better places to be than in a dusty garage with her Dad.
Before we would take the plane apart and bring it back to the basement or garage for presumably another year of work, Dad would always have a showdown between him and the plane. He would sit down in the grass or on the steps and just stare good and hard at his plane. I know that he was afraid he would never finish. He was afraid he was wasting all of our time and family money on something that would, in all likelihood, never make it into the air. Instead of seeing all that he accomplished he only saw how far he had left to go.
I can only imagine how overwhelming it was to build an airplane from scratch. There are hundreds of kits you can buy that would have produced an airplane in a fraction of the time it was taking Dad.
But Dad thought the kits were cheating. He was doing it the right way.
Sometimes I would sit beside him in the grass while he stared at pieces that he had worked so long and hard for.
“Hmmm,” he would murmur to himself, the noise carried past his lips on an exhausted sigh.
A daughter’s belief in her father can make anything possible. “It looks like a real plane, Dad.”
“You think so?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He would look at me. Or maybe he was looking to me. “I guess so.” His arm would wrap around me. “Do you think I’ll finish this thing some day?”
I would lean back into him in reply. Then we would stare a while longer, pilot and co-pilot, while the possibilities of the day settled all around us.
CHAPTER NINE
As Mom and I stared blankly at the weepy faces of your family, faces that held traces of your reflection that I wasn’t ready to see, I felt like I was in a room of strangers. No one knew what to say to Mom or I. No one wanted to talk about how you’d died or what we’d been going through before coming to Missouri. Worst of all, no one wanted to admit that your death hadn’t been real until we had arrived to Missouri without you. Seeing us would always bring a new shockwave of pain for your relatives. We would never come home again, David, Jan and Sarah.
Jan and Sarah. Could we ever be enough?
Mom was a widow. But what did that make me?
I realized that the people who had curled my hair, watched my dance recitals, read me stories, tucked me in, kept clay imprints of my handprints on their dresser were pulling back when I approached them. When I needed them the most.
Mike broke
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