Fear of Flying

So, this weekend I’ll be flying out to Los Angeles thanks in all parts to a natural hair blogging contest that I won. The skeptic in me always wondered if anyone really wins these contests but alas- I’m going. The win was unexpected and exciting at once. It sounds pretty phenomenal on paper and when I’m telling my friends the story of how this trip came to exist. For about 36 hours I’ll be living it up- jet setting across the country, getting picked up by a private car, checking into a fabulous hotel and partying it up with a celeb-gone-curly and a natural hair rock star. Pass the Courvoisier please!

There’s only one problem. I’m afraid of flying. Seriously. My fear is not really based on anything other than perhaps EVERY SINGLE MOVIE about planes crashing. There is one out now. It is nurtured by the fact that every time I’m about to fly, there is a crashing plane report. This happened earlier this week, locally. And finally, there’s just more of a gamble involved than I like to take. I have no control. With every bit of turbulence, I scan the faces of the stewards who serve peanuts and soda from a silver, table-clothed cart for signs of danger. I behave as if I could possibly do anything should they display even the smallest hint of a problem. I know I can’t. But I do it anyway. And once we make it to our destination, I bless the ground and pray the hours don’t fly before I have to get back on and head home.

Although I’m addressing my fear of flying, there is another part of this story. I’m adopted. I’m still getting used to telling folks. I don’t know how to be any other way except blunt on the subject. I am what I am and its taken me a long time to get to this place. It was a one-way ticket! After divulging, I await reactions for a signal of danger. There is always the danger of them feeling sorry for me, suspecting I'm damaged goods or  seeing the shame and pain I’ve buried over the years after finding out the person who birthed me, chose not to raise me. Being adopted is a sensitive subject for me. For many like me. And yet- it is still a favorite joke of comedians and comedic writers. I’m guessing they’re not adopted. But I digress as always.

So here is the hitch to the giddy-up: My birth mom (BM) lives in Los Angeles. Since finding her, we have spoken only a few times a year and I’ve seen her only once during a week-long occasion in 2004. It may have been the most interesting Christmas present I've ever received. And from her it was the last and only. Fast forward nearly 7 years, too many painful conversations, long silences, weird and random text messages of “I love you’s” and “lets start overs” to now. 

After much internal debate, I sent her a message saying I would be in town and when. I relayed that there is a small window of opportunity for us to briefly connect. She agreed to meet, responding with her usual, hokey language, signing X’s and O’s next to her name. XOXOJoanne. In typing this, I realize we share the last 3 letters of our first name. It makes me giggle like a child. She reduces me in that way. In my dreams, I wish we shared more. But to date, we have only had fleeting moments of recognizing that which we share as mother and child; that which we have in common despite the great divide of adoption. I don’t know how this meeting will go but I admit I’m afraid. I’m afraid of allowing my emotions to fly. I’m afraid to allow them to land on any semblance of excitement or happiness at seeing her again. I’m terrified that she is forever the lothario and I the jilted lover. I’m afraid she won’t show. And afraid that I’ll be rejected, yet again by my first mother. She gave me life and I worry that with each rejection, she’ll take some of it away. It is a gamble and scarier than any plane ride I’ve been on thus far.