One of the real heroes of the tragedy is this man, Captain Hani Galal. A stray bullet probably grazed his head during the hijacking. Captain Galal landed the aircraft in Malta only by the lights of a plane on the ground.
Christmas 1985, a month after the hijacking. I’m posing for this picture outside of my in-laws’ home in Hopkins, Minnesota. At the time, I was confused, hurt, and angry. I tried to live as if I had it all together, but I didn’t. At the same time, I was in awe of the fact that I was seeing another Christmas. I was in awe that I looked OK. I didn’t know what it all meant.
In January 1986, less than two months after the hijacking, I flew to Texas to visit friends and relatives. This picture was taken outside of Barb Wilson’s house in Baytown, Texas. Barb had tied a yellow ribbon around the tree in her yard; the banner (at right) on the lawn reads WELCOME HOME JACKIE. I’m pictured in the middle; to my right are my dear friends Debbie and Kerry. To my left is another friend, Linda, and my sister Mary.
I’m pictured here with my long-time friend, Barb Wilson. Barb helped me get through a lot of hard times after the hijacking. She was an integral part of my support system.
Standing beside me is another good friend, Suki Fitzgerald, 1987, in Dallas, after my second brain operation. Suki is someone who is always there for a friend. She flew from Texas to Minnesota to visit me several times, and helped me through some hard times. Also pictured is Mike and Kathy.
Visiting my mom and dad in Pasadena, 1987. Though we lived far apart after the hijacking, my parents called me a lot and provided great support.
June and Greg (“Pops”) Pflug. Scott and I lived with his parents for two months after we returned to the United States following the hijacking. June was of much help and made life easier for me. I could not see correctly, so she helped me get around the house. I had lost my short-term memory, so she helped me learn how to tell time and count money again. Just as important, she said things that made me feel better about myself. Pops could always make me laugh, even on some pretty dark days.
President Ronald Reagan, myself, and Scott Pflug in the Oval Office of the White House, April 15, 1987. It was the day after President Reagan ordered U.S. fighter pilots to bomb Libya in retaliation for state-sponsored terrorism against U.S. citizens and military installations abroad. Mr. Reagan was very influential in getting Project Hope to help me out. The charity paid off all the medical and therapy bills I’d accumulated up to that point.
A speaking engagement at the Northwest Mutual Life Annual Conference in Milwaukee, 1990. I was the closing keynote speaker. At first, speaking was a form of therapy for me. I got excited when people were listening and getting what I had to say, when the room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
At home in Minnesota, summer 2001, with husband, Jim and son, Tanner.
CHAPTER 8
WHERE AM I GOING?
I FELT A SHORT PERIOD OF RELIEF after telling my story in court. But it didn’t last long. Life started to get very difficult for me during this period. Everything was becoming an obstacle.
Even the littlest things, like taking out the garbage, became big struggles. It was hard because I still hadn’t gotten used to coping with my vision problems. If I forgot to concentrate on looking up, down, and to the right, I’d still bump into things or have other minor accidents around the house.
One day, I pulled the garbage bag out from under the sink to wrap a twist tie around the top. I picked it up and started walking toward the door, then noticed something was wrong. There was blood all over the floor. Shards of broken glass poking through the bag had sliced a tendon in my right ankle. I must have dragged the sack across my bare foot and cut myself without realizing it. I looked in the plastic bag and saw a broken peanut butter jar. I forgot that I had put it in there. For six weeks, I wore a cast up to my knee, making it even harder to get around.
One day, while sitting in a hot bath with my cast hanging over the tub, I felt overwhelmed by all my grief and loss. The dam holding back my feelings had burst. Wave after wave of sadness, despair, and pain rolled through my body. I shook with grief as the feelings poured out. I sat in the bathtub and just sobbed and sobbed.
I’d stop for a while, then another wave would come crashing over me. I didn’t seriously think about committing suicide, but I didn’t feel much like living anymore, either. If there was a hell, I was in it.
In the midst of all my pain, I plunged into a deep depression. For several weeks, I could hardly get out of bed. I didn’t feel excited about life or see a future that gave me hope.
What was going to become of me? Why were all these bad things happening to me? I couldn’t make sense of it all, and was afraid I’d never adjust to my new life.
As a young girl, I’d suffered from low self-esteem. But I’d never really acknowledged or looked at that before. The whole time I was growing up, I was nagged by an inner fear that I just wasn’t good enough. These feelings were especially intense during my junior and senior high school years.
Now, they were right back in my face. I couldn’t rely on the old crutches I used to prop myself up with: filling up all my time with activities, losing myself in a relationship, or striving to be the best teacher I could be. Now, I was learning disabled and all my old fears came back to haunt me.
I could hardly read or drive or even take care of myself. I was stuck with myself, with nothing to distract me or gloss over my pain. I had to look at and feel what was inside me.
I thought back to the LD students I had taught over the years. I remembered what happened when I got mad or frustrated because they didn’t seem to be listening or learning. I’d see their faces go blank. I’d see them withdrawing and feeling as though they just didn’t measure up and maybe never would. I could tell they felt bad about disappointing me. I knew they wanted to do good, wanted to please their teachers and parents, but just couldn’t. I remembered how, somewhere along the line, many stopped trying and gave up; they decided they were just too dumb.
I read the sadness and hurt in their faces, but couldn’t know what they felt like inside.
Now, I did.
Now, I felt as if I was letting people down, disappointing them. I tried so hard, but I just couldn’t measure up. I had a gnawing feeling that I wasn’t good enough—maybe I never would be. Still, I was determined not to give up.
I took lots of baby steps on the way to becoming more independent. Going to the grocery store was very exciting for me. It gave me a feeling of independence, something I could do on my own. Before I could drive, Scott dropped me off at the grocery store.
Yet shopping was hard. Just writing a grocery list felt overwhelming. In the beginning, Scott helped me write down the items we needed, according to where they were in the grocery store.
I remember I’d ask Scott, “What comes first? The meat or the produce?”
“The produce is first,” he’d say.
So then I’d write down all the produce items I needed that week: oranges, apples, lettuce, and so on.
“What’s next?” One at a time, we went through the grocery store, department by department, and listed the items we needed in an average week.
I was able to write down the name of each item, but reading what I’d written was another matter. I had to really focus on one word at a time and cover the rest of the words with my hands to make any sense out of the jumble of letters and spaces in front of me. It was like trying to read words with my head underwater; letters were floating all over the place. My brain was confused by the bits and pieces appearing on the page.
This would be really tough to do in the grocery store. I had to think of a better way. I had an idea.
After writing my list, I read each item into a tape recorder. Then I rewound the tape, slipped it in my Walkman, and headed for the grocery store. In the grocery store, I put on my headphones and listened to the tape as I repeated each item on my list one by one. As I heard myself say each item—slowly!—I’d stop the recorder and go look for the it
em.
Sometimes, I’d hear myself say an item on the tape and start to go get it … then forget. I’d rewind the tape and listen again and again.
Reading continued to be a problem for me long after the hijacking. Even after the swelling in my brain went down and it returned to normal size, I still had trouble reading and understanding simple sentences. It was tedious work trying to understand every word and what it meant in the context of a sentence. Though the floating eventually went away, the loss of parts of my visual field was permanent.
I went to a neuro-ophthalmologist to have my vision checked. He gave me several vision tests. In one test, he put one red ball by my right eye and one by my left eye (where I could see) and asked, “What do they look like?”
“They’re red,” I said.
“Is there anything different about them?” he asked.
“Yeah, the one on the left side is awfully bright,” I said.
He took them away and then showed them to me again. They were exactly the same color. He said, “We don’t know why that happens, but sometimes it does with people, like yourself, who have had some brain trauma.”
For some reason, red was a color that my brain connected with. This clicked with what the neuropsychologist had told me in Houston. The doctor suggested a technique that helps many learning disabled adults who have trouble moving their eyes from left to right while reading: take a red pen and go from left to right on a page, underlining each word, from the first letter to the last. This exercise would help my eyes to connect the letters that formed a word—and see them in the right order. He said the process might take a while, but with practice, I could do it.
I hadn’t thought of it before, but I already knew how to do this exercise from my experience as a special education teacher. It was one exercise I taught kids who had problems with tracking—reading words from left to right. For some reason, red was a color that they could focus on. By following the red line under the words, they were training their eyes to move from left to right.
I might give them a list of letters like the following:
A D L H A C A P Q R
Some kids had a problem picking out a particular letter from this sequence. So I would tell them, “Every time you see the letter A, circle it and don’t lift up your pen.” It was a tracking exercise. When they got really good at that, and that problem with their vision improved, we’d move on to another exercise.
I sat down at the kitchen table in our apartment with a newspaper and tried to read. Let’s say I wanted to read a simple word like going.
My eyes would automatically move to the end of the word and see the two letters ng. I knew that ng was not a word, so I put my fingers on the letter g and backed up, right to left. There was an n. I backed up another space and found an i, then o, and, finally, a g. Backing up one more time, I came to a space.
I always looked for the space, because the space marked the beginning of each new word. With my fingers, I traced over the word from left to right—g-o-i-n-g.
After I had identified each letter in the word, I’d go to the next space—end of word—and start over. Back up, back up, back up—space. Then read left to right.
After describing my reading method once, someone said, “Jackie, why don’t you just look to the left side?”
“Don’t you think I tried that?” I said with frustration.
My eyes wouldn’t let me go over there. Before I was shot, I had the ability to go to the left side, just like anyone else. But I didn’t have that ability anymore.
The exercise that really worked was the one that I used with my LD students and that had been recommended by my neuropsychologist. I took my red felt-tip pen and placed it on the first letter of a word. I made my eyes follow the pen as I underlined the first word from left to right.
My goal was not to read the newspaper, but to train my eyes to see the words from left to right. I used a newspaper instead of a book because I could throw it out every day and get a new one.
I put my red pen at the end of each word, then moved it from right to left until I found a space, the signal that I was at the beginning of the word. Once I found the beginning of the word, I underlined it from left to right.
Red was the only color my eyes could stay focused on. If I used any other color my eyes would bounce right off the page.
After a few months of practice, I was able to read a simple story in the newspaper. As I practiced more and more, however, I gained proficiency and speed. My eyes and brain were beginning to learn how to read all over again.
As my brain went down to its normal size and the floating started to disappear, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to drive again.
I wanted this so much because driving meant freedom. I wouldn’t have to rely on others to shuttle me around. I thought driving would give me back a more normal life. As my memory improved, I felt ready to give it a try.
One clean, crisp Sunday morning in February 1986, Scott and I were driving through some back roads in our Ford Bronco. Since there wasn’t much traffic, I thought it might be a good time to try driving.
“Are you sure about this, Jackie?” Scott asked.
“Yeah, I want to. I know I can do it. Let me just try a little.”
“Okay,” he agreed.
Scott pulled onto the shoulder so we could change places.
Scott didn’t know if this was a good idea. He knew about my visual problems and thought it might be better for me to get used to sitting in the passenger seat of our truck.
It felt strange to be back in the driver’s seat. I hadn’t sat behind the wheel of a car or truck for nearly a year. In Cairo and Stavanger, I rarely drove. We mostly rode our bikes everywhere. The last time I’d been driving was when I was back in Houston before Scott and I got married. I felt a little like a teenager learning how to drive all over again.
I drove on the shoulder for a few feet, then stopped. It was too hard. I was too scared. “I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t see right.”
I was exhausted by the effort it took to concentrate on the road and move my head back and forth and from side to side so that I could see where I was going. But I tried again.
At one point, we came to a stop sign. I thought I was very close to it—but stopped long before reaching it.
Scott didn’t understand what was happening. He thought I just didn’t pull up far enough. I kept going until, all of a sudden, a little boy appeared out of nowhere. In reality, I stopped quickly, before I was anywhere near the boy. But to me, he appeared very close to us. I was scared. “I can’t do this anymore,” I told Scott. “I don’t belong here, behind the wheel.”
My visual perception was still not healed. I was relieved to pull over and let Scott drive again.
Despite the mixed success on my first attempt, I was determined to drive again.
Scott wasn’t thrilled by my continued eagerness to get behind the wheel. He saw that I sometimes had difficulty just walking without bumping into things.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to give up. Affirmations and visualizations were important in achieving this goal. When I started praying to drive again, I didn’t say, “I want to drive,” or “I hope to drive,” or “God, please let me drive.” On a piece of paper, I wrote: “I drive today. I zip in and out of traffic today.”
I stated my goal as if I had already attained it. I saw myself weaving through traffic on a busy freeway. Throughout the day, I repeated this statement to myself: “I drive today.”
It took lots of work and practice to get to the point where I felt comfortable driving again. After I got my driving permit, I spent a lot of time practicing in parking lots and on side roads. My visual impairment created huge obstacles. It was more than a year after I first started driving before I felt confident behind the wheel. Eventually, I passed my written and behind-the-wheel driver’s tests and got my license.
The technique I use to drive is basically the same one I use to read and to wa
lk. I just put the vehicle by the white or yellow line and move my eyes down, ahead, and over to the left—all the places where my visual field is gone. Down, ahead, and over to the left.
In the late spring of 1987, a cultural festival was being held at the St. Paul Civic Center that I really wanted to go to. Scott didn’t want to go, so I asked Mrs. Pflug if she would come with me.
She talks about what it was like being a passenger with me.
When I was ready to change lanes or take an exit ramp, I’d yell, “Okay, is there anybody coming?”
She’d yell back, “No!”
I’d ease into the lane and keep going. I needed her help to drive around. She said I was just going 55 miles an hour like nobody’s business. She talks about how scared she was.
Again, I’d shout, “Well, is anybody coming?”
“No!” June Pflug yelled back.
And I’d change lanes again.
We made sure we came back from the cultural festival before it got dark.
In the beginning, I always drove with someone else in the car—just in case I got lost.
In time, however, I wanted to venture out by myself. One of the first trips I made by myself was to the grocery store, just three blocks from our apartment.
I’ll never forget that first trip. It was a beautiful day as I pulled out of the driveway and onto the main road. I took a left turn and stopped at the light.
Now what? Where am I? I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do next. Take a right? A left? Or go straight? I went straight. As I continued to drive, nothing looked familiar.
I got lost and arrived at the store an hour later.
Miles To Go Before I Sleep Page 14