If she had a favorite memory

Eunice Sanborn, who lives in Jacksonville, Texas, was twelve years old during the first (briefly) sustained and controlled powered flight in an airplane. She didn't live anywhere close, but she was alive when the papers circulated news that man had finally mastered the sky, and still is. I found that remarkable while sitting in an airport—that busy nest of machines. What an immortal notion: to be 117 and have lived throughout the timeline from winged bicycle to aging flight attendants and six-dollar cans of Heineken.

My father has been a pilot for almost thirty years. I should be proficient in the history of aviation, but after reading a blurb on it in a textbook, I don't remember much about the incident, except the name "Kitty Hawk." I also remember the inventors' first names, Orville and Wilbur, and especially the family, Wright. I didn't remember that they lived and died in Ohio. My only other details: sometime after, a blimp exploded, and then the great war plagued with dogfights, those leather goggles for the clouds. I tried to research more but even with new resolve became bored. The flight lasted twelve seconds. I couldn't tell you which brother flew.

I discovered Eunice while waiting four hours for a flight last Friday to Portland, which is much longer than a drive would've been. Despite a childhood often spent in the air, I haven't experienced much of delays. What can prevent a flight in Texas? It only produces tornadoes, and even those are rare as elephants. I understood I might miss my connection to Denver, might be stranded in Portland, might have to take the max to some great gentrified neighborhood near a hostel. I believe usually in providence; the disrupted plans would've been thrilling. But in the Mahlon Sweet Field Airport I had only time to think about the suddenness of advancement, and of course the name of the Wright brothers. I wondered if someone was still alive who remembers them, and if time passing could distill the power of any life-altering event. I had my computer. The city of Eugene offers free Internet. A dozen couples lingered around the gate, asking their spouses about the implications of the hours lost.

Of the 100 verified oldest people, half of the living, three, are Americans. Only a 63-day span exists between them; the youngest, Walter, has outlived his wife by over half a century and been described as "sharp;" they were all twelve years old, alive, during that flight.

A picture of Eunice reveals something expected: a toothless mouth, hands like tree limbs clutching a pink comforter. If her eyes weren't slits, you wouldn't expect much vibrancy, or cognizance, behind them. The degenerative point made clear in a local newspaper: "When asked if she had a favorite memory, she said that all her memories were her favorite."

The plane at last arrived, another flight to Denver scheduled. The PDX is a louder airport, the swarm of planes more representative of a changed time. I thought after Eunice that was it: no mind can hold a memory, a thrill, so long. But again stuck waiting, I looked into Walter, hardly a youth, and a man to be studied. Because he often is. After an interview, a psychiatrist researching prolonged cellular life returned amazed. "He talked about the election of 1921," the Utah doctor said, "always comparing things that were happening a hundred years ago to what's happening today." His mind, memory, haven't faded.

The day before, talking with a friend, I suddenly remembered the mice in my first house. My parents' bathroom began to smell, which persisted, maybe even worsened, over a passing month. Tolerant no longer, my father tore through the Sheetrock at the most potent place in the wall, and out poured thirty bodies of mice, some rotting, some ashen, and some twitching, about to die. I must've been younger than five. I hadn't thought of it in years, almost decades, and though I can't pinpoint the relapse, the scents, the mystery—nothing had diminished. The excitement was still tangible like for Walter who, I'm sure, recalls news of that man-powered flight, over a century before. I won't live so long, but in five months, in twenty years, I doubt many thrills will fade with age. I expect the resurgence of something powerful isn't difficult.