The Dangers Of Flying High

The Dangers of Flying High

John W. Gilmore

“I really don't think there is a moose out there, do you?” She laughed.

“I can't say, Robbie, because I'm as high as you,” Karen commented, “but I don't think there is a moose outside of our airplane window. Not a real one anyway.” I brought a finger to my lips and shushed her. She already looked like a motorcycle chick or something in leather pants and a tight leather jacket with studs. She wore a green Mohawk and had a ring through her nose and a spike through her tongue. It made me shiver just to look at her. Yuk! And she was my adopted daughter? I don't know what my wife was thinking, or what we did to her. She wasn't like that when we got her. She leaned into me.

“You still ashamed of your little girl,” Dad? All the perverts and puritans looked at me angrily, thinking she was my date because I was black and she wasn't. Americans were so small minded, that is why we were on our way to Norway.

Marian, my wife, had moved there ahead of us. We had gotten tired of doing the black thing in the US. The country carried too much baggage when it came to racial issues. They had started out horribly killing the Native people and enslaving people of African decent. That doesn't count the forced indentured servitude of some of the European population who were force to come to the US to avoid debtors prison. The country started off horribly. That wasn't the problem. That they couldn't get over it and wouldn't change was the problem.

Marian was a professional musician who played with various orchestras before she got tired of their crazy schedules. You wouldn't believe the amount of traveling some of them did. They would often travel and after performing go out in whatever town they were in and live it up there delving in drinking, drugs, and wild sex. She was no exception. She was a wild character when we first met. I don't know how we ever got serious about each other. It was all supposed to be a one night stand, but we fell in love. We fell in love fast and hard.

Marian couldn't have children. She told me that early in our relationship. That didn't mean so much to me, because I wanted her more than I wanted children. We got married and began to travel and see the world. I had a business on the internet. I had a knack for copy writing and marketing. Marian would travel with me on the off seasons. Eventually she left the orchestra and began to give private lessons. She also began to cut a few pieces of music herself. In the age of the internet and digital sale, I began to promote her and we did very well selling MPs directly.

As a result of her success and fame on YouTube and other social media, she could charge more for lessons. Her clients became more exclusive—famous musicians who just needed some coaching to perfect their technique meeting with her one or two times. Our life was great. We could travel all over the world, and then it happened. We decided we wanted to have children. Where were we going to adopt from though? We thought about it over and over and let it go until a friend became very ill and couldn't take care of her daughter anymore.

It was very painful for all of us. A close friend with a terminal illness always is. We had been the godparents of the little girl so we stepped in and did what we could. Unfortunately, Marjorie never recovered. Her breast cancer had metastasized to brain cancer and she eventually died. Her dying wish was that we would adopt her little girl. That is what we did. At first we were worried about two black people adopting a white 2 year old. How would that work? Would we even be able to do it? We knew how the country was, but since we already had custody of her and Marjorie's family supported it wholeheartedly, we adopted Karen.

Karen was a beautiful, little girl. She had a great sense of humor that just seemed to get better as she got older, and a knack for music. When she got old enough we got music lessons for her and dance classes. She was definitely an artist, but she was caught between two worlds. She had black friends, and white friends, and had to learn to live in three cultures, maybe even a few more. We were black, but very upper-middle class. The black kids in the neighborhood and at her school were a mixture of many classes—some very poor, as were the white kids. She really had to learn to navigate many worlds, but she seemed to be doing well.

I felt kind of guilty because we kept her schedule full. We wanted the best for her. When you have the money and only one kid, I guess you do. The dancing, the music lessons, and then the martial arts classes kept her busy during her childhood. She seemed to love the business. By the time she hit 17 she was about to strike out on her own. She started school early and skipped one grade so she was about to graduate high school.

By then she got into the punk style outcast thing and the crazy hair and piercings. I didn't know what the heck was wrong with her. She also started to want to leave the good old US. It is difficult for an intelligent, artistic person to find a place in the US where there are so many dunces. It is always a struggle, especially for someone who has lived a multicultural, stimulating life, to dumb themselves down enough to get a career and begin to live the expected life of quiet desperation we all share in the US. So we began to look for a more enlightened country where she could go to college if she would like, or be able to make a living with the skills she had even if she decided not to. After a lot of research Norway came up.

A friend I was talking to, who had just visited Norway, said that they were looking for artists, poets, and musicians in Oslo. They wanted to expand the diversity and multicultural nature of Oslo so it could become an international city promoting the arts and music. They even had a decent living wage without a college degree, long vacation time, and health care. I talked with Marian and Karen about it. Karen did some research on the internet and in chat rooms and Marian checked it out through her network. They were both impressed as was I and it was a go.

She went ahead of us to find a place, having received a job as a music teacher right away because of her vast experience and connections, while Karen and I wrapped up the house, put most of our things in storage, rented out the house, and then followed. So here we were, flying across the Atlantic to a new life. I wondered how it would be for me in a place where there probably wouldn't be any African Americans, though there were several African immigrants. That would be new for me.

I leaned in closer to my daughter who was about 18. I couldn't believe that I had gotten high with her. What a bad parent I was...not. It was just sharing a joint. Can't be anything wrong with that. It was natural, and she was a musician. She took the cue from me and looked up into my eyes.

“Can't wait to get you home, Baby,” I said loud enough for the idiots to hear. She grinned.

“Thank you, Daddy.”

“I love it when you call me that,” I said.

“I like it when you call me your litter girl.” Several people around us began to frown causing us to break character and laugh. “I'm his flippin daughter!” She said loudly, clenching her fists and making eye contact with many of the passengers. Most of them quickly looked away. One person grinned.

“Knew it all the time,” She said. She went back to reading her magazine. We flew on without incident until we got to Iceland. Iceland was an interesting country. There was a lot of geological activity going on there. There were geysers everywhere and many waterfalls, streams, and caves. We had purposely planned a three day lay-over there to explore everything. Somehow they had set it up with the airline, Iceland Air, for tourists to be able to take a lay-over there up to a week without paying anything extra. We figured, why not? We would stop there and then continue on to our final destination, Oslo. Oslo was the place to be.

We landed in Iceland with no mishaps. We left the airport in a rental van and drove to the grocery store first to pick up some food. We were doing Air BNB and had a place reserved with a kitchen so we figured, why not save the money. We put food in our little van, just enough for three days, and began to head toward the Air BNB. It was a longer ride than expected.

We left the airport around 8 in the evening and picked up the car from a strange, short, witchy type woman who kept talking about fairies in a thick accent, and how lucky it was to meet one, despite all of the lies about fairies. She said we would have the adventure of our lives because we had been kind to her and unafraid. I didn't know what she was talking about. We just kept smiling and nodding. She gave me a wink and handed me the van keys. I had no idea that the adventure would mean a very long trip to God only knows where in the middle of the night. It was almost 11:30 and we still hadn't gotten there. How was that even possible? I kept looking for the landmarks they had given us. The GPS kept telling us to continue, turn left, right, left, right, and then said “whatever!” and stopped. It seemed as though we were getting nowhere. I could see that we weren't going in circles.

Something shot across the road. It was so dark I didn't know what it was. I almost hit the thing. Karen grabbed my arm and shouted “A monster!” I jumped and she began to laugh.

“Very funny,” I said. She pointed ahead at very small sign pointing to the right. Mystery Air BNB.

“It is a mystery,” Karen said. “Because I don't know why Mom signed up for this place. We must have passed a thousand places before getting here, and it feels creepy.”

“Sure is a mystery,” I turned down the narrow dark road and hit the bright lights. It was dark as hell. “What kind of place is this? Your mother must have chosen this for revenge. She was mad because she couldn't come.”

“You think monsters are out here?” Karen asked, grinning from ear to ear.

“I hardly think so.” We continued to drive and came to a bridge crossing a very small stream. We arrived at a large house about 25 feet after and pulled into the circular driveway. “You think it's safe to leave most of the stuff in the car?” I asked.

“And who will be out here to steal it?” She asked. I looked out the window.

“What is that?” She craned her neck.

“It looks like a moose,” she said.

“I didn't know they had moose in Iceland,” I said.

She gasped and brought her hand to her mouth. “I can't believe it,” she said. “Look what it's dragging behind it. A parachute.”

The End