18 Venerdi: First International Flight & the Terror in (of?) the Air

No one who knows me or has been in my immediate vicinity in the weeks before my departure for Rome will need to be reminded that I fear flying above most things. Having white-knuckled my way from Pittsburgh to LAX a few years ago I began to have anxiety attacks about the flight to Rome weeks prior to leaving. I would never have considered getting on a plane, much less flying across a body of water as large as the Atlantic, except that I'd had an offer I couldn't refuse. My best friend was going to Rome during his sabbatical to do research on architecture in the age of Augustus. "Look at my excellent apartment!" Dan wrote, sending pictures of a quaint apartment with stucco walls and casement windows that opened overlooking winding cobblestone streets. "You should come," Dan said. Just like that.

There was no way I could go to Rome. I'm broke. I'm a terrible flyer. I don't know Italian.

"You should come," he said.

"This is the chance of a lifetime," my friends said.

"You'll hate yourself if you don't take him up on it," warned Mom & my sister Laurie. Of course they were right.

So I did.

And as soon as I'd purchased the tickets I began to panic in earnest. The panic bled into other areas of my life and once led me to pull off the highway in construction on a bridge at night. Somehow a feeling of eerie calm took me over a few weeks before the flight in which I thought "I'll worry about it when I'm on the plane." This worked until Laurie took me to the airport, where I became both dizzy and weepy, convinced that one of several options would occur:

• I'd be unable to set foot on the plane at all and be forced to return home with my tail between my legs, my vacation paid for but unattended, or
• I'd get on the flight and have a panic attack in the air which would cause me to have a stroke and die, or
• I'd get on the flight and have a panic attack in the air which would cause me to freak out, be forced into restraints and eventually hauled off the plane by security, or
• I'd make it through the commuter flight but be too frightened to get on the international flight, thus stranding myself in Philadelphia while my luggage traveled on to my destination without me

I began to take the Ativan in small quantities about an hour before getting on the plane, knowing I could use the calm. By the time we actually boarded I could feel it at work in my system, and while I knew intellectually that I was terrified, somehow my emotional center just didn't give a rat's ass. This is not to say I wasn't wildly nervous, and as I boarded I warned anyone who came within barking distance that I was a bad flyer, including the stewardess who looked at me blankly and then said in her cheeriest voice, "Have some bottled water!", and packed me off to my seat.

My seat mate was a young man who looked to be about 12 years old and who was none too happy to make the acquaintance of the deranged person blocking his access to the aisle. I came to find out that he was headed for his second tour of duty in Iraq and that he was in the military police. Fortunately for him the flight was a short one, although he was treated to a view of me clawing the air wildly upon takeoff and a babbling monologue once we reached elevation and I had sufficient breath in my lungs to talk.

While takeoff makes me crazy I love every bump and lurch of the touch down, and was in a wildly self-congratulatory mood as we hit Philly. I'd like to take this time to give a shout out to the folks who designed the Pittsburgh airport - the best I've seen thus far. Alas, Philly is a huge drag with expensive shops, bad food and little seating outside boarding areas and restaurants. I sat in a sushi bar for as long as I thought was polite, then sat for a while in a post-customs area and finally in a pizza place until it was time to board the overseas flight.

After re-medicating I boarded the larger plane bound for Rome about 6 pm. I was fortunate to be on the end of an aisle, and that only two of the three seats in my section were actually filled. Sadly this doesn't count for much in terms of comfort. Legroom was cramped, even for me, and sleeping was nearly impossible as my seatmate found when he tried to lay on his pillow and fold-down laptray. My vegetarian-option dinner wasn't bad for tofu airline food and contained some microscopic carrots in a bag labeled "carrotinis." After watching hideous in-flight movies, the sun set on my first day of glamorous international travel.