Looking homeward

Continuing to live life while death rages in your homeland, attempting to forge working and flying routines while your family and loved ones are stuck in the thick of it halfway across the world is an adjustment that compares to no other, if there can be such a thing as an adjustment or a comparison here.

War leaves nothing untouched. Flying over New Jersey fields, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Philadelphia skyline is quite a stark contrast to a drone video of Mariupol, a once thriving port city on the Sea of Azov in Ukraine, now razed to the ground. Green earth here, as far as the eye can see; nothing but black and white ashes there. I drive the thought out of mind to focus on the instruments. We follow the ILS into Millville Municipal Airport, my very first instrument approach, to grab lunch at the airport. The small World War II-themed café has a period poster with a checklist of what to do in the event of a nuclear catastrophe: No. 7 reads, “Kiss your ass goodbye.” With repeated, poorly veiled threats from Moscow, coupled with what has recently been daily attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, are we standing at the brink of one now? Back up and airborne, I take in the landscape: a bird’s-eye view that has always offered me a respite from the daily grind, an opportunity to step back and check in with the big picture, a welcome albeit temporary peace these days, one that’s above and away.

With our 11-month-old passenger in tow when not on the training flights, I’ve been building cross-country hours. Recently we flew into Ocean City, Maryland, tied down for the night, and camped on the beach. The flight path took us across the bay and further south than my familiar private pilot cross-countries along the coast of New Jersey—one of my favorite routes that makes me picture flying over my hometown of Odessa on the Black Sea, although I’d need an F–16 type rating to attempt that flight now. The sun was setting and reflecting off the water on our return, soft early evening VFR with that magical feeling of holding the world in the palm of my hand, the way we held our baby when he was just born, so vulnerable and so exquisitely beautiful. Why would anyone wish it death and destruction, come at it with artillery, bombs, tanks, and hatred? Before departure that day, we learned that the Russian Federation blasted into oblivion a public bathroom on one of Odessa’s beaches. Their television said it was a dangerous military target hit by a high-precision missile. Although the unfortunate truth is that the percentage of military targets destroyed in Ukraine is negligible when compared to obliterated civilian infrastructure, Odessa laughed and we found ourselves laughing along with her. Laughter feels good in the airplane. Laughter is good on the ground too, but everything is better in the airplane. I am so fortunate to fly and to share the wonder of flight with my family and friends. I love instrument training and I’m delighted at the progress in how I handle the airplane. I enjoy the the discipline of numbers, rarely needed in my professional life of a sculptor. In the world torn apart by war, I find consoling the singular concentration and application that flying requires.

Night flights are my favorite. The dull ache in the face of the unknown, ever present these days, recedes as we sail through the purple calm on the magic carpet ride that is our airplane. Cities one by one light up underneath, with no visible boundaries or limits, and I bask in the most incredible feeling of peace I have come to know. The airplane’s low steady rumble, soft glow of indicator lights, quiet chatter on the radio, and an occasional beacon moving below and away, and I begin to think I could stay up here forever, just one of a million stars shooting across the night.

When the war started, I printed out a small Ukrainian flag and took it up in our airplane. I did that instinctively and without any set purpose. But upon reflection, perhaps I understand a little better now why the astronauts take their children’s drawings with them or some other small personal memento and let it float inside the space station while they orbit the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, 420 km above its surface. Somehow an object, no matter how mundane, when traveling such vast distances with such intense feeling, transforms into something monumental and powerful. So did my little flag at 4,500 feet, while my country, a former Soviet republic not devoid of flaws and problems, but with its distinct language, history, and culture, became a beacon of freedom and courage for the entire world. We, Ukrainians at home and abroad, are convinced we will emerge victorious. We must. The question is how long will it take and what price will we pay?

Julia Levitina, from Odessa, Ukraine, is a private pilot and instrument student.