Patterns: Tales of Flying...and Of Life - a Book Review

Patterns: Tales of Flying and of Life
Bette Bach Fineman
Editorial & Aviation Services Ltd
2007
$20 from bettebachfineman.com

"What am I doing up here?"

That's how author Bette Bach Fineman begins her memoirs. It's the early 1970s and she's on a cross-country flying trip with her husband and a couple of friends - she in her own plane, her husband in his, and the couple in a third. They've landed in a farmer's field, she's making her approach. This is in the days when

The mid-west [was]still a bit naïve...there was still a lot of country there that no one cared if you used, as long as you didn't abuse it.

It's not long, however, before Bette realizes why she's up in the sky, pilot instead of co-pilot.

I was finding [out] how many people live in the same body beside my latest child. Thinking and doing, I was testing myself to see how a learned skill is applied, how problems are faced and tests passed...tests far removed from the familiar kitchen sink, the hospital delivery room, the pile of diapers, the budget that gave me a headache, the grocery store. What I was doing was living my own life for once. It was different not sharing the joys and challenges of flight with my best friend in the seat beside me. I missed that, but I didn't know then what a great gift I had been given.

Then, one day, he left her.

Devastated, Bette set about putting the pieces of her life back together, and creating a new one. In Patterns: Tales of flying...and of life she recounts how she did it.

Out at the airport was the one sanctuary. No one dared say a word to me about Dick. They knew he was gone. They had seen him buy all new maps of the eastern states, pay his hangar bill, take the Swift and go. ...

So I flew the Champ, fooling around a lot on Saturdays, often crying during the flight. I realized I couldn't sell it, I loved it too much, it was my freedom. It was the only thing that was mine. So if I kept the airplane, I would have to get my private license. I couldn't give the children rides without it. I enrolled in the newly-advertised aviation ground school course, two nights a week. ...

She also continues to fly for the sheer love of it, in a restored World War I Tiger Moth biplane.