• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 194 0

for me, Roselle developed a serious health issue called immune-mediated thrombocytopenia (IMT), a blood disorder characterized by the destruction of blood platelets due to the presence of antiplatelet autoantibodies. The condition is an immune system disorder, most likely related to her exposure to the environmental toxins and irritants she inhaled in the midst of that tremendous dust cloud from the collapsing towers. We kept her on medication while she was still guiding to control the condition, but when her blood tests began to indicate changing kidney values, we decided to retire her. It was a very hard decision, but we had known the time was coming. Guiding is stressful both physiologically and psychologically, and we wanted Roselle to live a long and healthy life. After she retired, her kidney values went back into the normal range, and we continue to keep her on steroids, to stimulate blood platelet growth, and cyclosporin, an immune system suppressant.

These days Roselle is a senior citizen. The IMT has gone into remission. She’s still joyful and loving, with a gleam in her eye, but her joints are beginning to get stiff with age, and she spends most of her time napping in the sun streaming through the sliding glass door at the back of our house. She always jumps up to greet visitors with her wagging tail and body and a kiss. And if I were you, I wouldn’t leave any socks lying around where she can get to them.

13

SHAKE OFF THE DUST

Interdependence is and ought to be as much

the ideal of man as self-sufficiency.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Many of the key moments of my life have revolved around airplanes.

The most obvious example is the hijacked 767 that destroyed my building ten years ago. But there have been others, and these airplane encounters always seem to propel me in a brand-new direction.

I grew up beneath the wings of jets roaring in and out of Edwards Air Force Base, where my father worked. The base sprawled out across Rosamond Lakebed, a former bombing and gunnery range chosen for its big, flat surface and the cloudless weather perfect for flying. During the early 1940s, the military began flight-testing the country’s first jet fighter aircraft, the Bell XP-59A Airacomet. Later, the rocket-powered Bell X-1 was the first in a series of experimental airplanes designed to test the boundaries of flight, and on October 14, 1947, fearless test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first man ever to break the sound barrier, in the X-1. This dustbowl in the high desert was the center of aviation research and advanced flying. Test pilot Scott Crossfield called this jet playground “an Indianapolis without rules.”

By the time my family moved to Palmdale, about an hour’s drive away, the test pilots were riding these rocket planes over 100,000 feet in the air and exceeding Mach 3, or about 2,000 miles per hour. Fighter jets such as the F-100 Super Sabre and the F-102 Delta Dagger streaked and boomed through the skies. At the very same time, I was riding through the streets of Palmdale on my bicycle, testing my own speed and sound boundaries under the shadow of their wings. I grew curious about the science of flight and how engineers used the laws of the universe to blast these pilots up into the edge of space.

I didn’t get to ride in an airplane until I was fourteen, on my way back from Guide Dogs for the Blind with Squire. Somehow he wedged his big golden retriever body under the seat in front of me and spent the next hour cozy and asleep, his head on my feet. As the plane lifted off, I remember thinking, Now I can do most anything I want to do. I felt free and alive. Having a guide dog for the first time was like breaking the sound barrier, and I knew my life would never be the same.

After college, I flew all over the country for business, and airplanes became as familiar as trains or taxicabs. I loved flying, until a plane tried to kill me. I was booked on American Airlines Flight 191 from Chicago to Los Angeles on May 25, 1979. But I finished my work a day early and exchanged my ticket for an earlier flight. The