What if You’d Taught Her to Fly?
November 11, 2023
I am LaTrell, Earl’s youngest living Granddaughter (that I know of), and today is Veteran’s day. You may be telling yourself, “Leslie didn’t have any kids.” We would both be right, which sometimes happens in a world where two things can be true.
Anyways, today I flew home from Houston, Texas following a conference where I was one of two state advocates from Alabama sponsored by the CBPP to attend a SNAP policy conference. It was my first time sitting on an exit row. The attendant explained all of the implications.
I felt ill prepared. I looked around, no one else had picked up the booklet in the back of the seat. I said to myself “Fuck it, I’m not relying on my ego to save anyone if some shit goes down.” I picked up the booklet, did my due diligence, with no room for shame.
Then went to back to reading Octavia Butler to cleanse my mind of all the things the things discussed in the week prior…Acronyms after acronyms between hunger…houslessness…racism…domestic violence…So, I read about another world with no implications for me.
”Good Afternoon Passengers,” a flight attendant’s voice interjected as we floated slightly above the clouds, “today is Veteran’s day…” I zoned out, the man next to me clapped, and the wall next to me seemed to shudder slightly at a crease that seamed as though it were holding the entire operation together. I pondered on the privileged claps— a short lived sound, with no implications for the collective beyond that point. I thought of how you probably wouldn’t have been able to pilot my flight at one point in your life. I thought about a Black Air Woman’s mother, whose call I’d answered as a congressional intern. It was the only call that had ever made me cry. She spoke of the torment her daughter endured as a Black Air woman, and how she feared for her life in Texas, not abroad.
Why were people clapping? How useless. I thought of the implications of war on hunger. The people dying in Gaza at the hands of the descendants of those you’d fought to save. I starred out over the wing, and asked myself if you’d have respected me if I clapped too…If I hadn’t picked up the booklet. I’ll never know. So, I let the dead rest and question the living narrative.
I wrote stories about who you might be when I was younger, and now they are no longer about you, but who my mother would have been if you’d have taught HER how to fly. How would she have raised me differently? Would I have picked up that book, or would I have known the plane model number coming in? Would the shudders in the planes wall raised more caution than curiosity?
Anyways, today I flew home from Houston, Texas following a conference where I was one of two state advocates from Alabama sponsored by the CBPP to attend a SNAP policy conference. It was my first time sitting on an exit row. The attendant explained all of the implications.
I felt ill prepared. I looked around, no one else had picked up the booklet in the back of the seat. I said to myself “Fuck it, I’m not relying on my ego to save anyone if some shit goes down.” I picked up the booklet, did my due diligence, with no room for shame.
Then went to back to reading Octavia Butler to cleanse my mind of all the things the things discussed in the week prior…Acronyms after acronyms between hunger…houslessness…racism…domestic violence…So, I read about another world with no implications for me.
”Good Afternoon Passengers,” a flight attendant’s voice interjected as we floated slightly above the clouds, “today is Veteran’s day…” I zoned out, the man next to me clapped, and the wall next to me seemed to shudder slightly at a crease that seamed as though it were holding the entire operation together. I pondered on the privileged claps— a short lived sound, with no implications for the collective beyond that point. I thought of how you probably wouldn’t have been able to pilot my flight at one point in your life. I thought about a Black Air Woman’s mother, whose call I’d answered as a congressional intern. It was the only call that had ever made me cry. She spoke of the torment her daughter endured as a Black Air woman, and how she feared for her life in Texas, not abroad.
Why were people clapping? How useless. I thought of the implications of war on hunger. The people dying in Gaza at the hands of the descendants of those you’d fought to save. I starred out over the wing, and asked myself if you’d have respected me if I clapped too…If I hadn’t picked up the booklet. I’ll never know. So, I let the dead rest and question the living narrative.
I wrote stories about who you might be when I was younger, and now they are no longer about you, but who my mother would have been if you’d have taught HER how to fly. How would she have raised me differently? Would I have picked up that book, or would I have known the plane model number coming in? Would the shudders in the planes wall raised more caution than curiosity?
