Raising a Pilot: The moms of pilots are alike because we pilots are alike.

A mother is she who can take the place of all others, but whose place no one else can take.

– Cardinal Mermillod

You always encouraged our interests, 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 pilot. It’s in the hangar office now with the Duke, and I write for an airplane magazine. I even wrote an article using 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.    

Pilot Psyche: A Mother understands what a child does not say – even a grownup child.

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 moment, 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, anxiety 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 baby’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 offspring. Changing diapers, cleaning up Cheerios and SpaghettiOs, providing physical and mental comfort and managing the very first time we did, well, just about everything. Tempering the exciting, adventurous, and sometimes dangerous influences of the world, including dad’s hare-brained ideas, are included in your resume. Mothers are more likely than fathers to encourage assimilative and communion augmenting patterns in their children. Mothers are more likely than fathers to acknowledge their children’s participation in conversation. The way mothers speak (“motherese”) is better suited to support children in their efforts to understand speech. With these admissions, my analytical readers should now be more receptive to this, my less clinically focused, Mother’s Day thank you note.

Mothers hold children’s hands for a short while –
but their hearts forever. 

You and dad raised three boys. The ones known throughout the neighborhood, the school, and the airport as skinny, long-haired and raucous. We never got into any real trouble, but through multiple encounters with each of us, our small-town sheriff recognized us as the “Dingman boys.” We were the ones that made babysitters cry, grandma shiver, and you worry. But you persevered and gave us the confidence to succeed. We’ve grown up to become a machinist, a chemist and a pilot. And we know that: 

We made you cry

You wanted that last piece of pecan pie

It did hurt

You were afraid

You watched us sleep

You carried us a lot longer than nine months

It broke your heart every time we cried

You put us first

You miss those days…well, most of them

Caught It on Fire

You didn’t like me riding motorcycles or flying little airplanes, and you told me so but didn’t stop me. And you like to tell people how, on my first solo, I had a close encounter of the third kind. Well, it was a UFO until it became an IFO (it turns out it was a red party balloon in the traffic pattern). I probably didn’t need to worry you by reporting it on tower frequency. Except for the military airplanes you have flown with me in all of them. You and dad even went to Oshkosh, Mackinac Island and golfing a few times in the Duke. Remember the time we crossed Lake Michigan in a Warrior at night in the weather and icing? And don’t forget the time dad and I over-primed the 150 on that bitter cold morning and briefly caught it on fire. Now that I’m older with lots of experience, I tell people that whether caused by the pilot, a situation, the weather or by living the experiences of others vicariously, it’s the memory of being properly scared that helps develop judgment. And its judgment that keeps pilots alive – and I certainly scared myself a few times.  

TP (Tee Pee)  

Thanks, mom, for running interference. You protected us but didn’t shelter us. I’m sure there are times you saved us from others, from situations and from ourselves. Perhaps even from school officials and our sheriff during one particular high school football game. There was just one student in our small town known for flying little airplanes, and everyone knew that it was the older, long-haired Dingman boy. And I probably didn’t get away with the football game caper like I thought. It was a nighttime bombing mission of our high school. We dropped 30-some rolls of TP (toilet paper) on, but mostly around, the school’s football field. We knew that, like tail-end Charlie, if we attempted two passes, we would catch flack. So, we made up a feeder slide for the little window of the Cherokee 140 in order to drop the load in just one pass; and we flew high – too high. Bombing accuracy is all about winds aloft and TOF (time of fall). But I wouldn’t learn such things until years later in the F-16. Because of this lack of understanding, it was not so much as around the football field and school that the TP landed, as it was the proximate area of the surrounding Michigan countryside. If you lived in Southwest Michigan in the early 70s and one morning found some T.P. on your farm animals, oak trees or TV antenna, sorry about that; it must have been some hooligan.  

Training is like fighting a gorilla. 
You don’t stop when you’re tired.
You stop when the gorilla is tired.                

I sold that little, two-seat airplane that I bought when I worked at the paper mill. It was too difficult to move from base to base after I joined the Air Force. And for a long time, I didn’t fly anything but military jets. You were glad when I joined the Air Force – you figured it was better than factory work, especially since I lost part of a finger and some of my hearing while working in factories. You were proud that I advanced from enlisted to an Air Force officer. Until that is, you learned I was going to pilot training and then on to the F-16. Once again, you worried about me and airplanes. This time, a stronger and faster airplane – one with a gun, missiles and bombs, but only one engine. It did have an ejection seat, but I don’t think that gave you much comfort. You came out to the airport with dozens of friends and family when I flew one into the Air National Guard base in Battle Creek. You bragged and took pictures; your son was a fighter pilot. I fought the training gorilla, and yes, mom, it was dangerous, but I was careful and did a really good job. When the Air Force asked me to man a command post in Germany, I left the military in order to keep flying airplanes. My buddies were leaving too. We all went to the airlines.  

You must have been accustomed to the worry because you seemed to take it in stride. Maybe you thought that I’d be flying something less risky – until 9/11, that is. I’m sorry to worry you again, mom, but we are still fighting battles of one sort or another all over the world – now it’s COVID. And even though an airline pilot’s life is extremely structured and repetitive, I have had more mechanical and passenger situations at the airlines than I had in military and private flying combined. I’ve had engine failures, a handful of generator and hydraulic failures and unruly or non-compliant passengers that I’ve had arrested. Thankfully, the judgment you helped me to develop guided me through it all. But don’t worry, I’ll be retiring very soon.  

No More Pilots  

I raised a family of my own, like ours. Except that I had to learn about little girls – turns out they’re amazing. I understand that now, even without the neurochemical reactions. None of them had any interest in flying, though, so the flying gene will end with me – no more Dingman pilots. You’re probably glad to hear that. The moms of pilots are probably a lot like each other because we pilots are a lot alike. Somewhere in the lives of us pilots, there is someone like you that felt apprehensive about us flying and about little airplanes. But they saw us through the learning process, the cross-countries and the check rides. Some, like you, worry about us still. But the Duke is a very nice, bigger, little airplane. I love it, and I’m careful. So, try to relax, mom. You did a really good job. Thank you for laughing with us in the best of times and sticking with us through the worst of times. Happy Mother’s Day.