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From the Flight Deck
Raising a Pilot
The moms of pilots are alike because we pilots are alike.
by Kevin R. Dingman
A mother is she who can take
the place of all others, but whose
place no one else can take.
– Cardinal Mermillod
Dear Mom,
You always encouraged our inter- ests, skills and sometimes our whims. Thanks for the typewriter. I used it to write tales about Boy Scouts, my first solo and becoming a private pi- lot. It’s in the hangar office now with the Duke, and I write for an airplane magazine. I even wrote an article us- ing that old typewriter. It was a slow and deliberate process, but the sound of keys striking the paper, levering the carriage return and changing sheets of paper made me feel like a real writer. Topics for my articles seldom wander from the sky and I get lots of nice mail from readers. I write about flying and about airplanes – except this month. This month, for Mother’s Day, I’m writing about you.
22 • TWIN & TURBINE / May 2021
Our readers are experienced pilots and by nature investigative, skeptical and clinical – it’s part of how we pilots stay safe in the air. But it’s you and other moms that provided the means by which we enjoy and savor the fruits of our clinical behavior. For the mo- ment, let me indulge the analytical facet of our pilot-reader’s psyche. After childbirth, the way a woman acts is caused by what’s happening in her prefrontal cortex, midbrain and parietal lobes. Activity increases in
regions that control empathy, anxi- ety and social interaction. Feelings of love, protectiveness and worry all begin with electrochemical reactions in the brain. An enhanced amygdala makes her extra sensitive to her ba- by’s needs, while hormones create a positive feedback loop. Mommy, Mum, Mother. Motherhood, Mothering and to Mother. The first words of an infant often sound like ma or mama. This strong association with mother has persisted in nearly every language and every society on earth.
Mom is the female of the species that traditionally held the primary responsibility for the rearing of off- spring. Changing diapers, cleaning up Cheerios and SpaghettiOs, provid- ing physical and mental comfort and managing the very first time we did,
Pilot Psyche: A Mother understands what
a child does not say – even a grownup child.