I did the breathing thing I had learned from a meditation app I had used exactly three times.
It helped approximately thirty percent.
The plane lifted.
The takeoff had the specific quality that takeoffs have, the acceleration and the noise and the moment of lift and then the change in the sound of everything as you leave the ground.
I watched out the window.
The city dropped away.
North Carolina from above.
The rivers and the roads and the green of the trees.
I thought: Rose is up here.
For the first time in her life, Rose is in the air.
I thought about her face watching the ground fall away.
I would have liked to have been beside her for that.
About five minutes after takeoff, I heard her voice.
Carrying back to me through the cabin, in the specific carrying way of older people’s voices.
She said: ma’am. Excuse me.
