Read Flying by the Seat of My Pants: Flight Attendant Adventures on a Wing and a Prayer for Free Online

took my breath away. He wore a sweater over a button-down shirt. Conservative dresser—I liked that. (I was actually repelled by flash. I was drawn to men who didn’t need to impress me with their open shirts or gold chains.) This guy seemed to be a man of character. It just showed on his face. I don’t mean, character as in a
character
. I mean—as I later told his parents—he had God and country written all over him. (Tom’s parents later told me that Tom was a former Eagle Scout—as if being an Eagle Scout explained his good character.)
    Tom and I were married eighteen months after we met. Soon we’ll celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary. I can honestly say he has been the most-appreciated gift God has ever given me. I prayed for Mr. Right and waited years, trusting a God who kept me waiting—until he sent someone who was worth the wait.
    I wasn’t the only one in the relationship who got what was only dreamed to be possible. Tom said he could hardly believe he was dating a flight attendant, much less marrying one. And his parents were thrilled with the fact that their only son, who had moved from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Los Angeles, could now fly home anytime he wanted. “Marry me, fly free—on a seat-available basis” was a hit with the whole family of the man of my dreams.

C HAPTER 16
     

     

Flying Free
     
    T om and I decided to wait a couple of years to have children. We wanted to enjoy life together. And we did. We began using our free-flight benefit on our honeymoon. We flew First Class to Maui for a week, then on to Oahu, which was in the middle of a rainstorm. Then we flew to the Oregon coast, which was in the middle of a heat wave.
    During the first three years of our marriage, we flew to Colorado to ski, to New Mexico for dinner, and to Lincoln, Nebraska, at least three times a year to visit Tom’s family. We flew everywhere and anywhere we wanted. The airline I workedfor wasn’t doing well financially, so there were always seats available—and most of those seats were available in First Class. We lived a life of vacation luxury. I would call up friends in New York and tell them I was flying in for lunch. I would call up friends in Washington, D.C., and tell them I was flying in for a visit to the museums.
    When Tom and I were too poor to afford a hotel room and we needed a little excitement in our lives, we would say, “Let’s fly to Atlanta for dinner and a movie.”
    “Wow,” said my friends. “You have a special place in Atlanta to go to dinner?”
    “No, we eat on the plane. In First Class, it’s a four-course dinner. Then they show a movie. We sleep on the flight home.”
    “So let me get this straight,” our friends would say. “You’re not flying to Atlanta to attend dinner and a movie. You’re flying to Atlanta and having dinner and a movie on the plane?”
    “Yeah. It’s great.”
    We would often meet people in First Class who weren’t in our class financially. “So, what do you do?” we would ask before finding out they owned a baseball team or a line of grocery stores.
    “What do you do?” they’d respond. I’d always say, “I’m a writer, almost finished with the great American novel.” Then I’d confess that I also worked for the airline.
    Tom worked as an aerospace engineer for a company inLong Beach, California, until a bigger company in Seattle recruited him. When Tom agreed to that new job, we moved to Seattle. Our free-flight benefit was an advantage during the nine months we spent trying to sell our condo in Los Angeles.
    We flew back to Los Angeles to check on the condo advertising, walk on the beach, and try to recover from the shock of moving to a place where it rained every day. Eventually, we did sell that condo, and for the next ten years, I flew out of Seattle. That’s where Tom and I decided to start a family.
    We have a saying in our home: “Flying free is heavenly.” And all our friends who received buddy passes every year say,