Running away from home

“Where’s mom going?” I asked from the co-pilot seat. From 3000 feet up, we watched the amber-coloured Maverick drive out the laneway and towards Highway 4. 

Dad and I had taken off from the Goderich airport 20 minutes earlier and made a beeline to the farm. He was sneaking in a flight before spring cultivating and I was pleased to join him.

“I think she’s going to your sister’s for a few days,” he replied calmly, his English accent evident despite decades in Canada. The fact dad never let anything bother him didn’t seem weird to my 12 year-old self. Now I know that kind of calmness is unnatural. It was comforting to a kid, though. 

I thought about his answer. Going to Cathy’s for a few days? I had holidays in Ingersoll every summer with Cathy and her family but mom had never gone. She never went anywhere alone and she never did anything spontaneously. This was very odd indeed. 

Then it hit me: “Who will make my lunch?” I asked. 

“Helen,” dad responded, still calm. Helen was another of my older sisters. I was the youngest of five and the only one at home full-time. Helen boarded during the week in Goderich where she worked painting planes. I would later realize this was unusual for a 22 year-old woman but it seemed normal to me. I liked it when she painted teeth on warplanes. Mostly she put skinny lines on white Cessnas. She’d applied the amber and brown design to the plane we were in after dad finished building it. It was the ‘70s - everything was amber or brown or both.

His answer made sense: Helen came home on weekends and it was Sunday so sure, Helen can make my lunch. Crisis averted. 

Above the late winter terrain, we started following mom. She drove down our gravel concession past the church where neighbours’ cars glinted in the morning sun. If we were landing at the farm - which we were not - this is where we’d start the final approach to our grass strip. On Sundays, I swear dad would pull the throttle back a little over the church, not quite a “fuck you” but more of a “hey, look what you could be doing if you were an atheist.” Dad walked a careful line with his unconventional views. We kids were all Canadian-born but mom and dad were English immigrants who set themselves apart in many ways but still managed to be part of the community. It helped they were active in groups like the credit union, the Federation of Agriculture, 4H, and the Women’s Institute. Mom was even the treasurer for the United Church Women though she rarely attended services and dad never did.

We tracked mom as she got to Highway 4 and turned right towards Belgrave. That’s where the co-op was and the credit union too where I loved to go with dad to see George Michie, the manager, who would handwrite in my bankbook the interest and dividends I’d earned. The office was open only one morning a week. That’s the way it was then. Without ATMs, you planned. The credit union and co-op were critical to my parents’ success as farmers. My dad was a quiet socialist living the principles rather than bragging about them. 

We passed over Belgrave and the Maverick turned left towards Brussels. Amber would have been easy to spot even in a traffic jam but it was the lone car on a Huron County road during church. Dad seemed satisfied he’d been right - she was heading to Ingersoll - so we stopped tailing her and went west to Goderich. 

We sat side by side in our winter jackets in comfortable silence. Comfortable for me anyway - I can only imagine what dad was thinking. I looked down at the fields, brown but still dotted with late spring snow, and idly watched a dog chase the plane’s shadow, just like my dog, Arrow, did when one of dad’s flying friends would buzz our house. 

Dad had lots of pilot buddies. Five or six years earlier, he’d started building the plane in our cellar which had a dirt floor and, in parts, only a five foot ceiling. He didn’t care about comfort - he was on a mission. He was learning to fly at the same time, a man in his 40s whose first obsession, farming, had been replaced by airplanes. He was part of a circle of private pilots, all as keen as he was. In my mid-life I have realized two things: how he was likely “on the spectrum” as we now say; and how much I am like him as I throw myself entirely into my passions. His hyper-focus didn’t seemed odd to us. Others however thought he was nuts. 

“How will you get the plane out?” people asked. 

Dad was unfazed by the question. As always, he had a plan. He would create the necessary opening by removing a few stones from the foundation around the cellar window and excavating some soil. 

The day he planned to do this, mom had her own plan - she went to Wingham to get groceries. “The house better be standing when I get back,” she said, her tone hard.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I know what I’m doing,” dad replied with irritation. They never fought in our presence. The odd sharp exchange like this was as heated as it ever got leaving me to figure out the art of relationship discord without early modelling. 

Mom was not a fan of this airplane building. She was adamant she would not fly in it (and never did) and the birthing of its components through a gaping hole in the foundation of her house terrified her. I know I would feel the same in her position, her risk aversion having found a home in adult me. As an 8 year-old, though, I was excited. Despite her fears about the house, she left me behind and I stood beside that birth canal while dad and one of his pals midwifed the wooden fuselage and wing. They set the newborn parts delicately on a flatbed and drove them to Goderich where dad completed his project over the next couple of years, single parent to a new baby added to his family of human children. I became an airport brat often accompanying dad to the hangar and abandoning mom to whatever domestic stuff she had on the go. Since the plane had been certified for airworthiness, a Sunday morning tootle like this one was not unusual. 

“Take a look for other planes,” dad said as we neared the airport. We had no radio so navigation was all visual. I felt grown-up being asked to help. 

“There’s one there, dad,” I pointed to the sky over Lake Huron. I saw a Cessna 172 on its final approach to runway 33. “Oh, and another.” The second looked like dad’s friend, Don, also flying a home-built Jodel like the one we were in. Don’s daughter, Darlene, was my age and we’d spent many hours playing at the airport while our dads puzzled over the airplane plans.  

“Hey, that’s Don, right?” I tried so hard to impress him with my knowledge of planes, foreshadowing how, as a teenager, I danced with mom and dad when they found a shared hobby, and later still, learned cello when dad switched gears again and started instrument building. Finding common language with dad always meant going to his turf. Thankfully it was interesting and fertile ground to be on and when you met him there, he was a welcome host.

“You’re right,” he replied absently. He was focussed now on landing, dealing with flaps, ailerons, trim - words I knew and said but didn’t really understand. We were over the lake which made me a bit nervous but I didn’t let on. Dad did not appreciate nerves in the plane (or elsewhere). 

I sat quietly as we descended, first over the lake, then trees, and then the runway. Goderich airport was an army base in World War II so 33 was paved and much longer than we needed. The Cessna ahead of us moved onto the taxiway just as our front wheels touched down. We bounced a couple of times lightly, then the tailwheel made contact and we started to slow. It wasn’t the best landing he’d made.“Good enough for our purposes,” he mumbled to himself. This was his approach to life and one I strive for too.

Once we were no longer powered by inertia, he increased the throttle and got us off the runway showing whoever was coming in behind us the courtesy the Cessna had shown us. Flying is a gentleman’s game, well-suited to my father.

“Mom’s here.” I pointed to the parking lot where mom stood beside the Maverick in her beige car coat and navy polyester slacks. Dad didn’t answer. He was taxiing to the plane’s parking spot. 

“She looks mad.” Even from a distance, I could tell she’d been crying. Maybe was still. “Why is she here? I thought you said she was going to Cathy’s.” 

“I guess she changed her mind,” dad replied. His tone said, “mind your own business.” 

Parked now, he shut the engine off. I waited for the propeller to stop and then opened my door and clambered up and out, being careful to walk only on the black part of the wing. I watched dad secure the plane to the tie-downs. It took a few moments but mom didn’t move. 

As we walked towards her, dad told me to go to the hangar to get the Phillips screwdriver from the bench. I was happy to be gotten rid of and dashed off on my mission. I dawdled in the hangar, not sure exactly which tool he wanted but also not sure I wanted to approach the car. After a few moments, I guessed and grabbed the red-handled one and exited. The Maverick was stopped out front, engine running.

“Get in,” dad said through the driver side window. I opened the rear door and slid onto the bench seat. It was a long, slow, and tense drive to the farm. Mom was weeping. Dad was chastened. I was mute. 

No-one ever spoke of that day. I do not know how dad reclaimed the truck we’d used to get to the airport. Within a couple of years, dad sold the plane to Helen and he and mom started dancing. After that, he never flew again and we stopped going to the airport.

In later years, I have laughed with mom about the day she ran away. The feminist I’ve become is horrified that at age 12, I worried only about my lunch. I was blind to the unfairness of dad prioritizing his hobby over their life together. Their relationship was a product of the times and mom used the tools available to achieve her goals.