The Jet Plane
By Wickham Boyle
This past week my family, all four of us, worked at a fever pitch on various deadlines. My daughter, visiting from college, ate from our larder and stayed up late to finish her thesis. I was on deadline for a bundle of stories and my husband was in a rehearsal fury. My son Henry was in the throes of his final high-school project, his senior presentation for physics – a conceit which postulated that this slippery science could improve his pool game.
Our house hummed. Henry and I rose at dawn, our natural bright time, while my husband and daughter slept late after having tumbled into bed as trash trucks clattered below our downtown loft. We were once again all together, and I kept breathing in a piece of our rare, sweet, four-cornered existence.
Time seems to be racing since my children morphed into at least quasi-adult beings. I wonder, does time accelerate as you age or does the advent of grown children only make it appear that way? I hope it is an illusion, like the way modern car mirrors make it seem as if every teenie Mini-Cooper is a looming SUV.
This sped-up time is also wreaking havoc with my emotional life. Maybe interior life can only handle one speed, and if we push it too fast it buckles, causing floods of tears and terrible waves of terror and bittersweet commotion. I have always been emotional, but this is different, this page I’m about to flip, on which my children return to my nest only occasionally, is monumental. Not for them but for me.
On the morning of Henry’s big presentation he and I were once again up in the soft gray near-light. We reviewed his notes cards, ate big bowls of berries, and he scurried to pack up his giant poster board, the ubiquitous kind that every kid has carried, pasted with pictures and captions designed to provide the perfect backdrop to any presentation. He had a miniature pool set mingled with crumpled papers overflowing from his backpack.
“Hey, why don’t I drive you to school?” I offered. He declined. Henry’s first response is often no, but he also reconsiders. So I wasn’t surprised when ten minutes he later he asked if the offer was still good.
By then I had settled into writing and really didn’t want to brave the messy bedroom and my sleeping husband to find clothes, but something inside me said: “Okay, take the kid.” We corralled my son’s gear, walked to the garage, and plopped everything in. There he was, well over 6 feet tall, clean-shaved, and as neat as a boy can be in giant hip-hop clothes. “Okay, Ma, let’s go, you know I like to be early.”
I looked at him, at us, at the poster covering the back seat, the gear, the soon-to-be detritus of high school, and I burst out miserably: “This is the last time I will ever drive you to school, with a project, this is the last time . . .”
“Hey, Ma, I am not dying. You know these moments are more a parent thing than the kinda stuff kids think about.”
I knew, I know – and I hadn’t planned to make this drive a monumental marker, I had made a hapless offer, and in one fell swoop it became – oh my God, a huge moment, a milestone. We were here together, me in my mother moment and he ready to roll. Me saying Wow this is so fast and Henry raucous and ready, chafing at the necessities of his final high-school task.
Back home alone I stowed the car and wandered for a moment, not wanting to dive back into work. I felt so full, crammed, really, with vibrations of what I’ve missed in my life where I stumbled too egregiously while gawking at all the wonders that have blown past.
I decided to splurge on coffee someone else had made. As I pushed open the squeaky screen door of the coffee shop, the music hit me.
Bob Dylan is singing, filling me with music from when I didn’t know any better. His croaky voice breaks, and I hear it loud and clear: “Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast.” I know this song from 1975, it’s “You’re a Big Girl Now.”
I am, I am a big girl now, and one who would really like to get off the jet and find a way to slow the roll of time barreling over me. But work, family, and life beckon, so I better get back on my jet and tackle the day.
