Chapter 6

“Left rudder!” my new instructor Maureen Richards shouted from the back seat.

Panicked, I jabbed the rudder with my left foot. The plane abruptly swung hard to the left, faster than I expected, and I didn’t know what to do. I was losing control on my very first landing in the Citabria, an airplane that was a notorious taildragger. We were heading straight for the ditch at the side of Oakland’s Runway 33.

“Too much!” Maureen called out. “Remember, pressure on one rudder pedal is always followed by pressure on the other.”

My pedals moved under my feet as Maureen used her set of dual controls to keep us aligned with the runway. The nose straightened out, and we slowly coasted to a stop. I sagged in the seat, breathing hard. We hadn’t crashed, but only because Maureen had been there.

* * *

I’d thought a lot about that first lesson with Jack over the previous weeks. I’d wanted to blame him for the nearly disastrous end to the flight, but eventually I realized I was the one at fault. It’s the flight instructor’s job to be pilot-in-command. I’d abdicated my command, soothing myself with platitudes such as “The customer is always right,” and insecurities like “Maybe I’m being overly cautious.” If I wanted to be a flight instructor, or a pilot—or even a person living a full life on this planet—I needed to take control. I needed to find a way to develop confidence. I had to put incentives in place for becoming confident—I knew that much—but still I had no real idea of how to go about it.

Part of my difficulty was with the word command itself. It shamed me. Issuing orders meant putting my own opinions and desires ahead of someone else’s. It was something that seemed, well, selfish, and I wasn’t used to it. All my life, I’d never been in a position of authority over another human being. I’d been a daughter, student, or individual contributor—taking orders, never giving them. I’d obeyed my parents’ instructions. I’d been a good student, getting straight A’s and following teachers’ and professors’ guidelines. At work, I listened to my managers and worked late into the night to make my code robust, clean, and bug-free. Being obedient and following orders felt like it would keep me safe, just as I’d tried to make myself invisible to my tormentors in school. Being quiet was my defense mechanism, my surest method to avoid trouble.

Now for the first time, at age twenty-seven, I had to make the decisions. As pilot-in-command, it was my responsibility to ensure safety in the cockpit for my students and for myself. But what if my decisions were wrong? The consequences could be deadly, not just for me, but for an unsuspecting student. I had two choices: give up being an instructor or learn how to make the correct decisions in an airplane.

I’d chosen aviation because I knew it would lead to growth. I knew it would help me overcome my fear. And to live a full life—to become the person I was meant to be—I needed to stop being afraid of being in command, whether it was command of myself or others.

I’d been raised to believe that women weren’t supposed to give commands. No, instead, my teachers in middle school had taught me that women were merely supposed to look attractive. They wanted me to be and not do—unless it meant getting good grades or following orders with precision.

When I complained to my mother, she responded with a Philippine origin myth. A long time ago, she said, women held power in society. In each village, a female leader, a babaylan, with the help of a council of women, issued all the decisions for the village. The source of the babaylan’s power lay in a magical pouch containing a hot coal, necessary for restarting the village fires should they ever go out.

But one day a group of men sneaked into the women’s hut and stole the magical pouch. They threatened to withhold life-giving fire if the village did not acknowledge their authority. The women’s council met, and the babaylan said, “It’s all right if we let the men run the village. After all, they may have stolen the pouch with the coal of fire, but we women each still have our own pouches—our wombs. That’s all we need. Let them run what they like; we have the true power.”

I thought it was unfair that the women gave up their power and didn’t even try to fight back. My mother rubbed her forehead slowly and said the women were happy in the end. That didn’t feel like enough. Maybe they were just saying they were happy to stay safe. It was only much later that I realized the story’s underlying message, and perhaps, what she was trying to teach me. It was all about the deliberate choice to abdicate external power in favor of the power of sexuality. After all, it’s the traditional role for a woman in our society. As an attractive, sexual being, power of a kind will be bestowed upon you.

But I didn’t want to give up the means to define my own power. By relying on sexuality, I’d be contained and defined by others. Sexual influence operates over an inherently limited range, so giving up external power in the world would lead me to a smaller, less influential, less adventuresome life.

In my early teens, I rebelled against my mother, as well as my teachers and classmates, by disconnecting myself from my body, by refusing to wear fashionable clothes or makeup, by deliberately denying my sexuality. I turned to the world of the mind, the intellectual domain where my father excelled, and the power of logic and math to always produce the correct answer.

At first, it didn’t seem like I was giving up much. When I got my period at age eleven, my mother told me, “Now you’re a woman. Now you’re vulnerable.” This was around the time that the girls in my class started wearing short skirts and squealing around boys—the same boys who called me a freak and a spic. I couldn’t see the appeal in trying to make them aware of me in any way. So I deliberately chose to be neutral, uncharged, unobtrusive.

This neutrality came in handy later, in college and at work, where I found myself one of very few women in science and engineering. It wasn’t unusual for me to be one of two women in a computer science class of thirty or the only woman on a team of ten programmers. Over time, it became a survival strategy to be neutral, to be sexless, to act like one of the guys.

I didn’t realize how much I’d lost by disconnecting from my female body. To operate an airplane safely, to be truly in command of such a machine, logic isn’t enough. Yes, intellect and problem-solving are crucial to becoming a good pilot, but more is needed, especially when a pilot reaches the outer edges of the flight envelope, where aerodynamics invert the usual ground-based human instincts. Flying is so different from navigating in two dimensions on the ground. You have to relearn everything.

And what I was gradually coming to realize was that I now had to connect my body to the airplane on a visceral level. To become a good pilot, I’d have to develop an instinctual ability to sense what was going wrong in the air before it became a problem.

As a six-year-old, I loved to move my body to music and persuaded my parents to sign me up for a ballet class at the local YWCA. One day, as the teacher led us through some stretches, I placed the soles of my feet together and drew my heels all the way into my crotch. The teacher spent time praising everyone in the group but me. Finally I spoke up.

“See?” I asked. “Isn’t this good?”

She flicked her eyes briefly in my direction and sniffed. “No. You’re doing it wrong.” Gazing over at another girl, she said, “Excellent job, Amy.”

The tips of my ears burned with embarrassment. What was wrong with how I did it? Was I untalented, inflexible, ungainly? I kept trying, but her repeated criticism eventually convinced me I’d never be a dancer.

Luckily, flying was teaching me that I could reclaim my relationship with my body. I could buttress my weak areas and grow strong from within. I could learn to control a plane despite my fear and stiffness and lack of coordination. But to build the next piece of the scaffold, to develop a true feel for flying, I had to tackle a much more difficult kind of flight. A type of flying “beyond the reach,” everyone said, of pilots who flew awkwardly and mechanically.

Small airplanes lay upon a status continuum, their unspoken rank determined by their difficulty to land. And of all planes that required pilot skill, there was one type in particular that had the reputation of requiring the rawest pilot ability, the highest degree of “seat of the pants feel.” This was the taildragger.

* * *

Not too far away from the UC Flying Club’s line, another flight school called Lou Fields Aviation boasted a large, battered hangar housing a fleet of five or so aircraft. An older, fabric-covered airplane known as a tailwheel aircraft or “taildragger” was tied down just outside. It was a jaunty orange-and-white Citabria. Much cooler than the workhorse Cessna 152, the plane even featured a secret within its name: “Citabria” is “airbatic” spelled backward. Taildraggers earned their moniker from the third landing gear located at the tail instead of the nose (hence, “tailwheel” rather than “nosewheel”), lending them a classic, slick appearance. Because they were notoriously difficult to land, I’d always automatically ruled them out. But now I was ready to take one on. I had to.

Unstable on the ground, the plane wanted to swap ends so its tail was leading it down the runway, a so-called ground loop. Landing a taildragger was like balancing a pencil on the end of your nose; it required the coordination of a juggler or dancer—exactly my weak area.

I signed up for a tailwheel “checkout,” a series of flights in which a pilot is taught and evaluated for proficiency. And so one blustery fall morning, Maureen and I walked out to the bright-orange Citabria, canted back with its nose in the air like it was eager to fly. Every airplane possesses its own unique aroma. From the moment you unlock it as it sits on the ramp, a mixture of fascinating odors blasts into your face. Usually it’s the smell of vinyl or leather that’s been baking in the sun, overlaid with a hint of aviation fuel and just a touch of oil. But I’m sure there must be other molecules, complex aromatics, that explain the scent that greets you the moment you open the door.

This Citabria was no exception. Its seats were wide and cushiony, made from foam that had been overused until it sagged. But they felt comfortable, almost homey. Only a handful of knobs and switches protruded from the dashboard, and Maureen explained each of them.

“Notice the trim control is located directly below the throttle,” she said. The trim control adjusts the pressure on the control stick to keep the plane flying in a steady state. Forward trim can cause the plane to dive uncontrollably. She continued, “If you’re ever trying to increase power, but nothing happens and the airplane dives, it’s not true that the engine has quit and it’s time to declare an emergency.” She smirked. “Instead, you’ve probably grabbed the trim by mistake.”

I chuckled nervously.

Maureen pointed at the instrument panel. “That red knob is the mixture. Watch out if you’re ever instructing a Cessna pilot.”

Like me? I thought, flushing a little.

“He’ll think he has to pull carburetor heat on the downwind leg. He’s likely to pull the mixture all the way out instead.” She paused and deadpanned, “It turns out there’s just enough time for the instructor in the back seat to unbuckle her seat belt, stand up, lean over the student’s shoulder, and push the mixture back in before the engine completely quits.”

During the lesson, I mostly kept quiet, absorbing Maureen’s instruction. She gave me a lot to think about. I wondered why both the female instructors I’d flown with presented tough façades, warning me about students trying to kill you by shutting off the engine or needing to wash vomit out of your hair.

As we climbed into the plane, Maureen added, “You’re the first woman I’ve taught. I like it. Normally, with a guy in the front seat, whenever we land at another airport, people always assume he’s the pilot taking his girlfriend out for a ride.”

I had to laugh.

Despite my initial clumsiness with the plane, she was patient as she explained my mistakes and showed me how to improve. Somewhere in the middle of laughing at her brash comments, I got over my nervousness and started to feel the movement of the airplane from side to side on the landing roll and to learn to use my feet to compensate. I was connecting with the plane. Practice and good instruction were all I needed. If training proceeds step-by-step, a good instructor can teach anyone anything. Talent isn’t all-or-nothing. Skills can be developed. Power and confidence can grow.

After several weeks, she signed me off to fly the Citabria on my own. I headed out to the plane one crisp, sunny morning to put into practice all that I had learned. But sitting in the cockpit, I had a terrible premonition that I was going to crash. I wasn’t skilled enough to fly this tailwheel airplane. I slumped over the stick. Maybe I was asking too much of myself. It was enough that I’d learned to fly at all. I shouldn’t push myself any farther.

Maybe I was inherently just a Cessna pilot. Taildraggers required a level of talent I just didn’t possess. And now, facing this trial, I realized that I couldn’t go through with it. I sat up straight in the cockpit. Yes, that was it; I’d have to cancel.

As I unbuckled the seat belt and started to climb out of the cockpit, I paused. Wait a minute. By now I’d gotten used to doing terrifying things on a daily basis, and I got through them by working through a checklist to determine whether my fears were rational or not. I needed to do just that now. Had I performed adequately during the checkout? Yes. Had I studied the manual carefully? Yes. Did I have sufficient time in a tailwheel airplane to satisfy the insurance requirements? Yes, more than the minimum.

So my fear must be irrational. The only reason not to fly was my fear. This was the fear that had kept me from accomplishing so many things I wanted to do in life. This fear, if I let it, would ensure that my life would be narrow and boring and unexceptional.

I tightened my seat belt, started the engine, and took off into the beautiful day. It was a wonderful flight. And when I came back at the end, I made a perfect landing.

So my intuition had been incorrect. My childhood conditioning had shaped my instincts, which had told me to stay safe, to be rather than do, to relinquish command to someone else, because maybe I was unqualified. My personality type must be “JACP,” “just a Cessna pilot,” a physical klutz, untalented at dancing, a follower rather than a leader. I’d internalized all the low expectations teachers and adults had of me as a child, and turned those beliefs into something permanent: an inherent personality type that defined what I could and couldn’t do for the rest of my life: INTF. Incompetent, Nerd, Terrified, Failure.

But here’s the wonderful thing: instincts can be retrained. The brain is like a muscle; neurological research has confirmed this. If your instincts, shaped by your early life, are leading you down a path of weakness, you can make a change. It’s not going to be instantaneous. You don’t face your fears once and it’s all over. You need to keep working at it, day after day, the way you make bread: each day anew. And when you face your fears, and triumph over them, life opens up before you, becomes more exciting, larger and more vibrant. You become more powerful, and you learn to be comfortable with that power, comfortable enough to save lives—including your own.

The common belief, encouraged by the drama of Hollywood stories, is that change happens all at once. With a thunderclap—boom!—the protagonist morphs into a new person. But in reality, change happens bit by bit. It is slow, like a tree grows: not with a bang but with a gradual unfurling. When I look back on those days, I can’t point to a single, definitive turning point, a day when I was weak and insecure in the morning and by the afternoon had become confident and powerful, a master. Instead, it happened the way buds slowly swell on a tree in springtime. One morning, you wake up and realize the cherry tree is covered in blossoms.