Tell her in public, isn't that the secret? If you tell your wife something unpleasant and controversial at home, things are likely to get out of control quickly. Shouting, name calling, and a finally a salvo of dinnerware.
The same conversation initiated in a restaurant is invariably more civil in nature. Most people are reluctant to make a scene in public, and if they do, you are one step closer to having them certified as unstable. I thought it a master plan, especially since her gift certificate to Red Lobster could finance the adventure.
A fortuitous turn of events intervened however, and I was able to break the news in a much less contrived circumstance. It was her idea to go flying, and I was certain that she wouldn't raise a hand to me as long as we were in the air. It was a fall foliage flight, and we were weaving low over the ridges and valleys of the Sugar Hill area.
It was last Sunday, a gorgeous indian summer day with clear sky and calm winds. By my estimation the ash and maples had just crested, and we were at the start of the plateau of foliage, where the early trees start to fade as the later oaks and hickories start to turn.
I don't make a habit of flying low, but I made an exception for this flight. My wife loves to take pictures and she keeps all of them in order. We skimmed the steep ridge tops by a few hundred feet as we framed backgrounds with foregrounds in the light of the low afternoon sun. We circled to get the best angles on the shadows as they filled in the steeper valleys, and we took a picture of our own shadow on a bright hillside.
The scenes were nothing more than our little corner of Appalachia, but she was ecstatic with the autumn beauty. I knew that the time was right to tell her... it is time for us to bite the bullet while I buy an airplane.
I broke the ice with the innocent remark of how nice it would be if we could make flights like this from our back yard instead of having to make a 40 minute round trip to the airport. This is something that she has heard many times before, and she saw no challenge to it.
"I have two good leads on planes that are affordable and can get along with our short runway", I continued. At this point she made a terminal miscalculation and played her trump card, by saying that my mother wouldn't approve of such a folly. For her to reach outside of the household to find an objection implied that she had no objection herself.
"My mother", I said "knows that I am sick and accepts me that way".
She had been outflanked, she knew it, but I don't think she cared. This flight was done at her insistence, and the scenery was more gorgeous than she had hoped for. This was a landmark conversation in a 20 year relationship, yet it was really just a momentary interlude in a spectacular sightseeing flight.
Waneta Lake in the foreground with Bluff Point at the fork of Keuka Lake in the distance. This was an exceptionally beautiful late afternoon, but New York's Finger Lakes area is an easy place to take pretty pictures most anytime.