an excerpt from "And I thought I'd be a nun"

The plane was basically used for pleasure trips. Occasionally we would fly to Oklahoma City just for breakfast. One time Buss was in the wrong place in the air after take-off and I could see from the windows, jets at 7:00 and another at about 5:00 coming toward us. I could hear the traffic controllers trying to salvage what could have been a huge catastrophe. Not sure if Buss was drinking that early in the day but most times he flew while drinking beer. Another time we flew to Six Flags in Texas for the day. After we took off for home and well into the air I noticed that my mother hadn’t latched her door. The latch was above her head. She was holding Fred and looked back at me and realized that I knew. She put her finger to her lips for me to be quiet. I can’t describe the stress that I experienced as I tried to calculate how that door would or wouldn’t come open and suck mother and Fred out and possibly the rest of us as we began to descend and crash in a fiery explosion. I knew I had to keep my mouth shut because I could also imagine Buss pushing mother out or become a raving maniac about mother forgetting to latch it and having the same end result of a fiery end to our lives.
Your mother was very brave, wasn’t she?
Sorry to say, not afraid of anything. I guess she was hoping for the best that day and by God’s hand we landed safely and Buss never knew about the unlatched door.