Reinvention

When I was about six years old, my parents put me on a plane bound for Hawaii. My grandparents were set to meet me on the other side. A motherly stewardess led me to my seat and buckled me in. An older man sitting behind me had the patience to play catch with me using my ragged plush dog, Rover, as a makeshift ball. I’d throw the dog behind me over the seat and he’d throw it right back, over and over again.

I suppose I felt watched over in the sense that there were adults hovering nearby that would ultimately keep me out of harm’s way. But I distinctly remember feeling a six-year-old’s rush of independence. The newly forming yet powerful understanding that one could board a plane and be somewhere far away in a handful of hours. And, perhaps more importantly, the intuitive connection to the notion of reinvention.

My personal history disappeared when I let go of my mom’s hand and took the hand of the stewardess leading me down the tunnel to the plane’s door. I remember thinking to myself as this uniformed stranger buckled me in and brought me a pillow and blanket, "What if I threw a hell-bent, belly-to-the-floor temper tantrum right before take off?" Although completely out of character for me, I’d seen other kids do it in department stores and doctor’s offices, and it always fascinated me. Here, on this plane, lifting up above the people whose intrinsic understanding of me, by definition, was enough to keep me fairly predictable, I could become anyone I wanted. A shrieking, fist-pounding brat, for example.

iIcould be an All-Star Little Leaguer (which I wasn’t) or have an aquarium at home full of rare turtles (which I desperately wanted) or be wonderfully unique and eccentric like Eloise in the book I read until dog-eared.

Of course, I remained a well-behaved yet active first grader throughout the duration of the flight. No personas or adopted identities except in my own imagination. And when the plane landed and the stewardess led me down the stairs and across the tarmac into the arms of my tanned and tennis-shoed Grandma, I was home. Home in the sense of the familiar and habitually defined.

But for a few hours there over the Pacific Ocean, I was anyone I wanted be.