Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [111]
I know this, and I’ve tried to make adjustments in my life.
A stressful incident such as Flight 1549 either pulls a couple closer together or leaves them further apart. Lorrie and I have seen both extremes. At first, we clung to each other like ports in a storm. There was an onslaught of attention, and we were hanging on to each other for dear life.
Now Lorrie sometimes gets frustrated with me when I’m “Sully, the public figure.” Almost everywhere I go, people recognize me and want to interact, get an autograph, or reflect on something from their own lives. I’m cordial and gracious to everyone, and genuinely interested in their stories. Sometimes, when I get home, I can be frazzled and used up and short-tempered. I can be impatient with the girls.
“You have your priorities wrong, Sully,” Lorrie has told me firmly. “As nice as you are to strangers, that’s the same nice you need to be to me and the girls.”
She is completely right about that, and I’m lucky to have a spouse who loves me enough to tell it to me straight.
AT ABOUT eight o’clock one morning, a few months after Flight 1549, Lorrie and I were in our garage, looking out into the street. Kate had just pulled out of the driveway, headed for school. It was a bright, beautiful morning, but inside the garage, we were standing in shadow. Lorrie and I were holding hands and watching her pull away.
Kate began her three-point turn to pull out of our court, and she stopped for a moment to shift from reverse into drive. As she turned her head, her ponytail was swaying, and she looked so grown up. She looked almost like a woman in her twenties. It was startling to us.
In that instant, I felt a cascade of images coming into my head, images of her growing up and becoming the strong, confident young lady she now is. It was almost as if she were driving away that morning on her way to her own adult life. Standing there, I remembered when we took her to her first day of preschool at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Danville, and how a lot of the other kids were clinging and crying, and Kate just took off, happily independent. She said good-bye and never looked back.
In that moment, I also thought about an essay Kelly wrote in third grade. In the spring of 2002, US Airways had parked its MD-80 fleet and was retraining pilots on the Airbus. Until I got the Airbus training, I wasn’t flying, and I was able to remain home for a few months, very present in the kids’ lives. Kelly’s essay assignment, in the fall of 2002, was to write about the happiest time of her life. “The happiest time of my life,” she wrote, “was the time when Daddy was home.” Reading that was one of those bittersweet moments that filled and broke my heart at the same time.
Now here we are, with the girls pulling out of our driveway all on their own. I’ve blinked and everything has changed: My parents are long gone, the things I missed with my kids can’t be reclaimed, and my life is different now. Lorrie is right. I need to remember every day how precious our time with the girls really is.
By landing safely, Flight 1549 returned passengers and crew to the loving embrace of their families. We’ve all been given second chances. We’ve been given new reminders that we are loved, and new opportunities to show affection to those we care about. There were 155 people on that plane who got to go home. I must never lose sight of the fact that I was one of them.
19
THE QUESTION
ONE DAY IN early May, almost four months after Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson, three large cardboard boxes arrived at my front door in Danville. Inside, well preserved and neatly packaged, were the things I had left behind in the cockpit of the plane. Everything was there except that eight-dollar tuna sandwich I had bought and never eaten before takeoff.
I was somewhat solemn going through my belongings. I knew that after most airline