Just like Erica Jong

Now that I reside in Middle of Nowhere, Illinois, I fear that I will never see another direct flight -- to anywhere -- for as long as I live. Our town is situated equidistant from two regional airports, each of them about sixty miles away. Flying anywhere from either requires at least one leg in a wee li'l plane, one of those jets that have the suffix "-link" somewhere in their name. The kind where there is one flight attendant (usually a baby flight attendant, a toddler in eyeliner serving out her inaugural assignment) and no beverage service. The kind where you never get up high enough to escape the bumps and air pockets. The kind that is a PROBLEM for me, a mother with OCD and a breathless fear of flying.

This past weekend I went to Pennsylvania for a friend's wedding. My travel involved four flights; that's nearly two full days of sitting in airports and airplanes taking part in stupid little rituals. Flying is the only thing that brings out my OCD in visible, suitable-for-Maury-Povitch-show ways: every time I settle into my seat on the plane (but before I buckle my seatbelt) I scan the passengers for the human interest stories that will dominate the press after our inevitable crash. A newborn baby. A honeymooning couple. A little old lady wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Then, after the plane takes off, I count to 180, slowly. That's because most plane crashes seem to happen during the first three minutes of the flight, and I don't want to be caught unaware. And then, when the beverage service starts, I make eye contact with each and every flight attendant to establish his or her baseline facial expression. Beverage service is routine. Whatever Amber or Elaine or Jennifer looks like when she's pouring my Coke? That's her baseline - what she looks like when everything is normal. Establishing a baseline gives me full freedom and license to freak the fuck out should Amber or Elaine or Jennifer ever stray from the status quo. A widened eye of surprise from any one of them? Clearly, we just lost an engine and are about to plummet to our deaths.

I have been like this for years. My first flight was when I was 21, an overnight flight to Scotland. It was fine, perfectly smooth and easy. I got on that plane without a care in the world, and somehow emerged with a crippling, ridiculous phobia. I have promised myself, over and over, that I would never let it limit me, but it does. It does. The husband and I honeymooned in Canada and New York instead of somewhere tropical and exciting, largely because I didn't want to have to carry around any airport-related dread on our trip. We are embarking on our first ever family-of-three vacation this summer by car, ostensibly for financial reasons but really? If we're being honest? My fear is at the heart of it.

Ugh. I mean, I know most people have something like this, something that crawls up under their skin and takes control, but I still hate it. It makes me feel weak, like a baby. Everyone else on the plane always seems so calm, bored even. No one else ever grabs the armrest and closes their eyes and breathes in and out like a yoga instructor. No one else looks round and fat with ten pounds of airport comfort food swelling up their belly (french fries, nachos, milkshakes, Dairy Queen fudge-dipped cones). Why can't I be deathly afraid of something less public, less essential?

The way I look at it, I have three real options: 1) Figure out a way to get my shit together so that flying becomes just another pain in the ass, the way it is for most functioning people; 2) Continue to be afraid, and continue to fly, and continue to eat my feelings at the airport TGI Fridays; or 3) Stop flying and save myself the nausea and anxiety. Of course, given that I live in the aforementioned Middle of Nowhere, Illinois, refraining from air travel and thus only seeing locations within driving distance of my town is likely to cause its own share of nausea and anxiety. So maybe I actually only have two options.

I've thought about trying drugs, some kind of magic doctor-prescribed pills that would reduce me to carry-on luggage. That could work when I'm flying with other people, but not when I'm flying alone. Which more often than not is what I'm doing. Maybe there's a therapy animal for airport anxiety? Or maybe airlines should offer a companion service, where frightened solo passengers could hire a soothing grandmother with pockets full of Werther's candy to sit next to them and read aloud out of the Reader's Digest?