Emergency Landing

From the news...

"An Air Canada flight out of Trudeau Airport was forced to return because of a problem with the landing gear hydraulics. Flight 155 to Calgary took off Sunday evening. About forty minutes in to the flight, the pilots discovered the hydraulics problem and decided to turn the plane around and return to the airport. The hydraulics problem meant braking and steering would be an issue once the plane touched down. It made a heavy landing and a hard stop resulting in the gear catching fire. Emergency crews, already having been called in, were quick to extinguish the flames. All 121 passengers and five crew were evacuated from the aircraft without incident or injury. An investigation is underway".

I had a rather harrowing experience on Sunday night.

My flight from Montreal to Calgary had just taken off and the pilot had just turned the seatbelt sign off when a terrible grinding sound started on the left side of the plane. The plane had already been delayed an hour due to problems with the navigational systems, so I was already vaguely nervous about the flight.

The flight attendents seemed to be ignoring the noise, so I assumed the pilots were moving flaps or something, despite the fact that the plane was flying very steadily. The noise stopped, then started again a few minutes later. It was a harsh griding sound and everyone was looking around at everyone else. Someone asked the flight attendant what the noise was, and she said "it's a hydraulic problem that the captain is aware of, and they are testing the systems". My heart sank, but I didn't get too nervous since the flight attendants were starting to wheel out their carts and had closed the curtain to business class. The noise started and stopped a couple of times and we continued flying normally.

Some people put their chairs back and closed their eyes or were starting to open their books, etc. Since I was in an aisle seat, I was watching the flight attendants start serving drinks, when suddenly they were speaking in hushed tones and then the two attendants wheeled their carts quickly to the back of the plane. Another attendant re-opened the curtain to business class and then wheeled her cart up front to stow it.

I nudged the guy next to me, a young lawyer from Calgary with whom I'd been chatting, and said "something's wrong". The guy next to us opened his eyes and looked at me with panic. Then the pilot came on and announced they were having problems with the plane's "hydraulic systems" and that we'd be making an immediate emergency landing back in Montreal.

Then panic started. Flight attendants were running everywhere and they started announcing instructions to the cabin "Flight crew prepare for Level 6" followed by a sequence of tasks, then "Flight crew prepare for Level 7" and so on (I kept thinking as they got to Level 9 - what is Level 9 - a crash landing?).

They prepared us for a crash landing, trained us on the emergency exits, showed us how to brace for landing (two options!), how to hold babies. They moved people from emergency rows and replaced them with others. A woman was crying. People were holding hands. The flight crew was visibly shaken as they took us through a review of the emergency card, the exits, procedures for evacuation, etc. They told us to remove eyeglasses and high heels in preparation for landing. It was surreal. The full catastrophe.

All of this took about 45 minutes, as the pilot circled the Montreal airport. We speculated that he was dumping fuel, and allowing time for the emergency ground crews (ambulance and fire) to get into place. The plane was flying normally, except that occasionally it would make a jerky movement, as though the flaps would not cooperate or something. He seemed to have trouble banking, as he banked first one way and then the other towards the city. Then we started our descent very quickly and people got nervous and looked at each other wide-eyed. The plane was dropping quickly, and it felt like it was hurtling forward much too fast. There were no other announcements from the flight deck. This worried me a little since it meant the pilots were busy.

As we approached the runway, it looked like Iraq outside the window. Rows of emergency vehicles were lined up and there were red lights flashing everywhere. We could see them as we approached, two lines far back from the runway. That was scary, seeing those red lights in the night. And the plane was landing very fast. There were no announcements from the cockpit at all. Then we hit the runway fast and hard, at about 190 knots (70% faster than normal speed, the captain later told us). We were all thrown forward as they hit the brakes and put on the backwards thrusters and wheel brakes and whatnot the second we landed. It took the plane so long to get stopped that I thought we'd drive off the end of the runway! It was just black outside and the runway wasn't even lit up at this point. I don't know if we went beyond the lights, or what.

As soon as the plane stopped, it seemed like firetrucks were outside the windows immediately. They sprayed white foam onto the plane which started running down the windows. The pilot announced that the landing gear was on fire but that ground crews were putting it out. We were all so happy to be alive, but I kept thinking about the plane being full of fuel and hot metal and that that was a very bad combination! Great. Let me out before we explode!

To make a long story short, we were evacuated after sitting in the plane for an hour. The pilot walked back the aisle (to a great round of applause) and everyone asked him questions. He said that two out of three hydraulic systems on the plane had leaked and that the third system was not fully operational. They landed manually and were at risk of not having landing gear, and also having problems with the flaps, which is why they landed so fast. He said they had not dumped fuel. He said that the problem was very rare, but that he had just trained for this emergency six months ago, on their training simulator. Besides being cool as a cucumber, he looked like one of those pilot models from a GQ ad, so it was like watching a movie, seeing this handsomely-uniformed young hero cruise up the aisles to the praise of the gushing crowds!

Was I glad to be alive!

The whole 45 or so minutes from the time the emergency was declared until we landed was surreal. At the moment they make the announcement and you suddenly realize what's happening, it is pure disbelief. This is your worst nightmare. I can remember thinking "no way, this is NOT happening" as soon as they made the announcement, turned on all the lights, started running around. It went from normal to dead serious in 5 seconds. People's eyes were as round as saucers.

I thought about dying. I felt afraid. But I was mostly calm. It seemed like the pilot still had control of the plane, at least until they started descending so fast. I was calm until then. I kept telling the guy next to me "it will be okay." He was terrified and kept trying to phone his wife. He kept saying "oh god" over and over.

Some people appeared really afraid, and other people seemed totally stoic. I can't tell you everything that went through my head. So many things. So many emotions. Disbelief. You can't believe this is happening. You are sitting there alive and well, preparing to crash. You can't get your head around it, that there is real danger. At least the plane wasn't lurching or out of control. That enabled me to stay calm, I think, made me think it would be okay.

I thought about my Mom a lot, and was so happy I'd just spent a week with her (under rather stressful circumstances - an entire week spent at hospital attending to my Dad who is going into a wheelchair, showing signs or dementia, losing control of his body, and may need to go into a nursing home...). Happy I had seen my Dad and Grandma and aunts that I love. Mostly though, I thought about my Mom. I felt tremendously sad thinking about if I die, and when she gets the news, what that would be like. I felt worse for her than me. I thought about David and my cat. And then I even thought about my blog readers, and how it will suck because they will never know what happened to me and that there might not be another post. That I really should give David my password and userID.

You think about people most of all. And then you think about how hard you are on yourself everyday, for so many reasons, and suddenly realize how precious you are. You just suddenly have all this LOVE for yourself, all this thanks for your life. I didn't feel any regret. I just remember thinking that worrying about my weight is stupid. All the time I spend beating myself up for being a few pounds more than I should be is utter nonsense. That worrying about a job, a house, all that material stuff is really irrelevant. I remember thinking that I was glad I was wearing my rose-coloured Lululemon yoga jacket because I really like it, and it is good to die wearing something you like. Then I remember thinking that if there was a fire, my nylon jacket would burn very quickly. This upset me.

I put my cell phone in the pocket. Then I took it out. I didn't want the antenna jabbing into me and stabbing me if we crashed. I put it back in my bag. I put Kleenex in my pockets, in case we crashed and I had glass in my eyes or debris and needed to get it off my face or out of my eyes. Crazy.

Then you think about people. My Mom. David. He would get the house and that made me happy, that our mortgage insurance would pay it off and he could quit his job and be a fireman maybe. That Mom would get 4x my salary in life insurance and another 2x for accidental death, and that she could retire on 6x my salary. My friend Margaret...I hoped she would look through my papers and throw out all the crap and keep the good stuff. My cat. Silly I know, but will David send him to live with my Mom? You don't think about the people at work, I'm afraid.

I remember thinking about how much time I had spent thinking about home decor, and it seemed really funny. I felt suddenly not that it was stupid, but that it had been important to me, and that I respected that, that I wanted a beautiful home and that I was proud to have pursued creating a beautiful world, but that at that point, I would settle for a really tacky house just to be alive. Suddenly all my un-perfect and even the ugly rooms seemed perfect. I thought about my living room and how I have been struggling with the colour. And it suddenly seemed utterly stupid to waste time pondering that. Clearly TAUPE was the answer. I actually thought that...that life is too short to think too long and too hard about these things - taupe was the colour I needed to paint that room!!! It would pull everything together, and it would be DONE and I could go on living my life!!!

Crazy. I keep having flashbacks. I keep feeling sad, and then I feel happy to be alive. And then I feel like I should be really changed. And I am. But I just can't put it into words yet, I'm afraid. I thought about goodness. The one overlying thought I had as I considered whether or noto I would die --- was that I had been GOOD to people. I had lead the best life I knew how. I could probably have done more, but I had been a very good daughter and girlfriend and friend. I felt proud of myself. I felt like I can go now and it will be okay. Because people are what had mattered, and I had been a good person to other people.

That's a pretty profound epiphany. People are what matter. Relationships. I also felt like I had been true to myself. I have been honest and frank and open and even though I hate my job, I felt like I had lived a pretty authentic life. Authenticity is what matters too.

Authenticity. Integrity. Goodness. These are what matter.

I am at work now. I can't concentrate anyway, so I wrote this blog. This weekend we are going to the country to celebrate David's birthday with his Mom. Then next week he and I are travelling to Vancouver Island for a week in Tofino and a few days with friends and family in Victoria. I am eager to see the ocean. To be able to sit back and reflect on what happened to me, and what I am going to do with the rest of my life, and how can I frame this for myself, you know. Where do I put this in my brain...

And maybe eventually I will come back to talk about paint and beautiful houses and furniture. All those things are important too because they make your heart sing, and it is authentic and respectful to yourself to create a beautiful world for yourself and your family. Creating a lovely home is a gift you give yourself. But even so, right now it just doesn't seem very critical to me to get it all right, all right now. I think I also realized that it is important, but it will take less of my time because I will follow my heart more, stop trying to get it all perfect, and stop wanting what I don't have and moreover, don't really need. All will be well if I just let go of perfection.

Homeward bound....

I'm on holiday for the next 10 days or so...heading to New Brunswick, on Canada's east coast, to see my family! I was hoping to do lots of autumn walks and antique shopping when I'm home, but I have a number of sick relatives (including my Dad in hospital - he has a progressive neurological disease which is worsening), so I don't expect the trip to be very restful or fun at all. But still great to be home with family, and to help out my Mum! See you soon...

Interior Design: Books I Love

Jessica Lawson is an interior designer who edits a stunning collection of "Cozy" books including:
Cozy Atmospheres (Bedrooms)
Cozy Country Interiors
Cozy Hotels
Cozy Atmospheres (Interiors)

(There may be more books in the series, but my library and favorite booksellers don't list others).

My favorite feature of the series is that most of the photos appear to have been taken in Europe (judging by the square electrical outlets and architecture, etc). I think many of the photos were taken in Spain since the books were published there and many of the rooms have a Mediterranean feel. Interestingly, the books totally exceed their description as "cozy"- many of the rooms look very old-world, uncluttered, superbly stylish yet entirely unstudied, and very sophisticated despite the often rustic architecture. Many of the rooms look decidedly minimal. "Cozy" does not come to mind so much as, perhaps, "comfortable".

It never occured to me that I'd love Spanish or Mediterranean design since I always associate these locales with hot colours (those warm reds and corals and dark blues), open-air design and tropical plants, none of which I immediately love. But these books blew my socks off and I found there was nothing formulaic or predictably "Mediterranean" about them. Diverse colour palettes and decorating styles are included, from traditional country to predominantly modern, and from all-white to vividly-coloured.

In most of the rooms, the architecture is utterly amazing (decoration is barely needed!). But all the rooms all have an easy, undone, often eccentric quality to them.

So far, I've read (and meticulously studied the photos in) all the books except "Cozy Hotels" which is on order from my library!

I highly recommend these books for North American design lovers - the look and feel of the rooms is so different from North American ones. Mostly it's the amazing European architecture, but also it's the relaxed, unstudied approach (oh, and impeccable good taste). Not a single homeowner appears self-conscious about design, yet all the rooms are so timelessly beautiful.

If you only read one of the books, my favorite was "Cozy Atmospheres: Bedrooms". The rooms are often unassuming and humble. For example, most of the beds aren't "done" in a sea of pillows and bed skirts, but just feature a simple superb bedspread with a pillow or two tucked under the covers (how my Mom made my bed when I was little). There is occasionally a simple throw pillow or two. It's so refreshing to see "real" beds, not magazine beds.

My suggestion: READ THESE BOOKS (and un-do some of the damage done by the overly self-conscious decorating philosophy espoused by so many North American designers!). Do yourself a favour and take the time to un-learn a little. Plus, the text accompanying the photos is fun to read - it appears to have been translated, or perhaps written by a non-english speaker,so the prose is a little odd and flowery, but still a delight to read.

Three Things About Me

The lovely Chris at one of my favorite blogs, Just Beachy, tagged me with a request to share three unknown things about me, according to the letters of my middle name. Well, luckily you've been spared all my dark secrets, because I have a simple middle name, Ann. This name was rather common in the 70's, I'm afraid, and not quite as delicious as names these days. But I have grown to love its simplicity and it fits me more each day as I evolve, or should I say devolve, into a less complicated person (or so I aspire...). I have also met many beautiful Ann's.

Here is my list:

A is for Autumn, my favorite season. Autumn speaks to the old soul in me, the romantic, the part that likes quiet, cool weather, wind in the trees, sleeping in a warm bed with the window open and cool air coming in, a warm duvet or blanket under my chin. I prefer wool-sweater-and-jeans weather and I hate summer. I always loved starting school. I love the way autumn looks and how it feels, the gentle way leaves fall and curl, the saturated quiet colors as flowers die, the way things fade. I love the look of trees but mostly when branches are bare and the sky is grey and there is a perfect cool in the air. There's a solemnity in the shutting down of life that speaks to a very deep place in my soul.

N is for New Brunswick, a province on the east coast of Canada where I grew up. I miss it. I grew up in the country, in a small town, beside the river, surrounded by family and love, in a pretty little cottage house with a veranda and a big yard and forest, and always cats and dogs. There were problems in my house, but I survived them and I am strong from my childhood, although there are parts of me still damaged. My Dad was a drinker, and anyone who knows what that is like knows that they make the rules in the house and everyone lives on eggshells and everyone's heart aches all the time. To this day, I have no time for people who are (a) unkind to others or animals (b) hateful for no reason (c) moody and quick-tempered. I am a defender of the underdog, I am compassionate, I am humble, and I am defiant. I think and I feel deeply and the pain of others makes my heart ache because I know what it is like to be vulnerable. My Mom is amazing, and she still holds the world together, mine included. I like to sleep under the eaves in my parents house and revel at how well my life turned out and wonder how it will all end up. Good I pray.

N is for Natural. I don't like things too contrived, too perfect. I don't like anything that is too "done", including people, especially people. I like people who are approachable, who put you at ease, who don't think they are better than everyone. I deplore vanity. I am sensible and can be relied upon for the practical answer. I own a lot of black shoes.

I am the type of woman who doesn't mind wearing a pant suit when all the other women are wearing dresses. I imagine myself a real Kate Hepburn for that - she knew how to be herself and was never apologetic. I march to the beat of my own drummer. I speak my mind and can be frank. But I am not unkind. I don't need everyone to like me, but I love to be loved. I always struggle with dichotomies.. how to be two people at once. If I were really wealthy, I wouldn't be out clubbing or shopping in Monaco. I would be mucking out my barn in rubber boots and riding my horses. I would want to help people more and spend less.

With style!

I have fallen in love with this console table from Ethan Allen's "Glamour" collection. The table is a wood veneer, made from some exotic (and less expensive) woods, so it looks dark and sleek and modern but is more affordable than a solid wood piece. I'd prefer solid wood, but the table is so stylish and affordable that I can't pass it up. It's precisely the piece I've been seeking for my living room!

It's a perfect size (18"w x 30"h x 58" l) for the location in question, and represents the beginning of my living room *rejuvenation*!. I love the table's elegant lines but also its simplicity, and its sensual curves will update and complement the curves in our existing antique pieces. To my eye, the table has an Art Deco quality to it, which is always sleek and timeless. David gave me his vote to buy it when I came home tonight with photos on my camera. He's so easy to love sometimes.

Hydrangeas & A Jewish Wedding

I grew my own hydrangeas for the first time this summer, and cut my first bouquet today. I've heard that cut hydrangeas will often wilt as soon as you put them in the vase, so I tried a technique I read on the internet involving hot water and crushed stems. The more reading I did, the more methods I found. We'll see if it works. Anyone have any tips to keep my bouquet from wilting?

Yesterday David and I attended his father's second wedding, to a Jewish lady. This was my first Jewish wedding ceremony and I loved it. The rabbi was witty and insightful, the ceremony was solemn and beautiful, and I finally understand what "Mazel Tov!" means (this is what the crowd cheers at the end of the ceremony when the glass is broken by the groom - which is actually not a joyous thing, although it seems so, but has deeper meaning about the plight of the Jewish people and the destruction of their temple in Jerusalem, and to recall sadness even in times of bliss).

The whole day was sublime, the food was wonderful, and I met tons of new people. Too bad I had a bad headache the whole day!