“Before we take off, I’d like to do something I’ve never done on a flight before.”
My husband’s voice came through the speakers over my head.
My seven-year-old son grabbed my arm so hard his fingernails dug into my skin.
“Mom,” Mason whispered. “That’s him. That’s Dad.”
We were sitting in row 27, seats E and F, at the very back of a packed airplane at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Mason had his little blue headphones around his neck, a bag of gummy bears in his lap, and a drawing pressed flat against his chest like it was made of gold.
At the top of the drawing, in giant crooked crayon letters, he’d written: BEST PILOT EVER.
My husband had no idea we were on his plane.
That was the whole point.
“There’s a very special person on this airplane tonight,” Tyler said over the speakers. “Someone who means absolutely everything to me.”
Mason whipped his head around to look at me.
His eyes were enormous.
“He knows!” he whispered. “Mom. He KNOWS we’re here!”
For half a second, I believed it too.
Of course Tyler had figured it out. Maybe somebody at the gate recognized our last name on the passenger list. Maybe he spotted us running into that gift shop. Maybe this was his way of flipping our surprise around on us.
I could already picture Mason’s face when his father said our names over the speaker in front of a hundred and sixty people.
I had my phone up, recording. I started to rise up out of my seat so Tyler’s co-pilot could maybe see us if he looked down the aisle through the cockpit camera.
Then Tyler kept talking.
And I understood, in about four words, that the very special person he was talking about wasn’t me.
And it wasn’t our son.
I sat back down in my seat very slowly.
My name is Megan Hollis. I’m thirty-six years old. I’m a dental office manager in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And three weeks earlier, I’d thought surprising my husband on his airplane was the sweetest idea I’d ever had.
Tyler had been a commercial pilot for almost nine years.
He flies Airbus A320s for a major airline out of Charlotte. He’s a first officer. He’s been waiting four years to make captain.
Mason worships him.
Not likes him. Worships him.
Every single morning Tyler had a trip, Mason would come running down the stairs in his pajamas to watch him put on his uniform. The white shirt. The black tie. The jacket with the gold stripes on the sleeves. The hat.
“Are you flying a big one today, Dad?”
“Medium one, buddy.”
“Where to?”
“Denver. Then Phoenix. Then home.”
“Do the passengers know you’re my dad?”
Tyler would laugh and ruffle his hair.
“Not yet, buddy. Someday.”
Mason had flown on airplanes before. Twice to see my mom in Florida. Once to Disney World.
But he’d never once been on a plane his dad was flying.
He talked about it constantly. At dinner. In the bath. At bedtime. He’d ask what it would sound like when Dad talked on the speaker. Whether he’d be able to feel it when Dad steered.
Three weeks before that night, Tyler mentioned at dinner that he had a short Saturday trip coming up. Charlotte to Chicago O’Hare. Then turn around and fly back.
“I’ll be home by nine,” he said.
And that gave me an idea.
The next morning, after Tyler left for a two-day trip, I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and bought two tickets on his outbound flight to Chicago. And two tickets on his return flight home.
Mason and I would sneak on. We’d hide in the back. We’d ride the whole way to Chicago without him knowing.
Then, when we landed, we’d walk up to the cockpit door and surprise him.
And we’d all fly home together that night.
I told Mason that afternoon when he got home from school.
He screamed so loud the neighbor’s dog started barking.
Mason treated it like a top-secret military mission.
He made me promise ten times a day not to tell Dad.
He practiced his “surprised face” in the bathroom mirror. Then he practiced Dad’s surprised face.
He packed his own backpack a full week early. His blue headphones. A bag of gummy bears. A coloring book. And a drawing he worked on for three nights at the kitchen table.
It was a blue airplane in the sky. Under it were three stick figures. A tall one in a pilot hat. A medium one with long hair. And a little one with a giant smile.
Across the top, in big red letters: BEST PILOT EVER.
“I’m going to give it to him right when he opens the door,” Mason told me.
The morning of the flight, Tyler kissed us both goodbye at six-thirty.
“See you tonight, guys. I’ll bring you something from O’Hare, bud.”
Mason nodded. His face was bright red from trying not to smile.
“Have a good flight, Dad.”
“What’s with the face, kid?”
“Nothing!” Mason squeaked.
Tyler laughed and left.
The flight didn’t leave until five that afternoon. Tyler had a turn to Nashville first. We had all day to get ready.
Getting through the airport without Tyler seeing us was a lot harder than I expected.
We were walking through Concourse B toward our gate when Mason suddenly grabbed my sleeve.
“Mom. MOM.”
Tyler was walking across the terminal. Less than thirty feet away. Pulling his black rolling bag. Laughing at something on his phone.
I grabbed Mason by the hood of his jacket and yanked him into a Hudson News.
We suddenly became extremely interested in refrigerator magnets.
Mason pressed his face against a rack of shot glasses that said CHARLOTTE: THE QUEEN CITY. His shoulders were shaking so hard trying not to laugh that I thought he was going to knock the whole display over.
Tyler walked right past the store window and disappeared around the corner toward the cockpit crew room.
“That was so close,” Mason gasped.
“So close,” I said.
We waited fifteen minutes. Then we went to the gate.
We boarded with Group 7. Last ones on. We kept our heads down all the way down the aisle.
We made it.
