When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk, bought a ticket, ten minutes later they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors had said my father would not live through the night and the flight was cancelled. A young man with a dark brown moustache told me another airline had a nonstop leaving in seven minutes. See that elevator over there, well go down to the first floor, make a right, you’ll see a yellow bus, get off at the second Pan Am terminal, I ran, I who have no sense of direction raced exactly where he’d told me, a fish slipping upstream deftly against the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those bags I had thrown everything into in five minutes, and ran, the bags wagged me from side to side as if to prove I was under the claims of the material, I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast, I who always go to the end of the line, I said Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then run. I lumbered up the moving stairs, at the top I saw the corridor, and then I took a deep breath, I said goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort, I used my legs and heart as if I would gladly use them up for this, to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of women running, their belongings tied in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my long legs he gave me, my strong heart I abandoned to its own purpose, I ran to Gate 17 and they were just lifting the thick white lozenge of the door to fit it into the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not too rich, I turned sideways and slipped through the needle’s eye, and then I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet was full, and people’s hair was shining, they were smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a mist of gold endorphin light, I wept as people weep when they enter heaven, in massive relief. We lifted up gently from one tip of the continent and did not stop until we set down lightly on the other edge, I walked into his room and watched his chest rise slowly and sink again, all night I watched him breathe.
I was not alone on my trip home, and I know you understand what I mean. I’m referring to the fact that because God is present, we are never alone, even when we might lack for human connection. I’m not referring to any companionship with the hundreds of other passengers surrounding me on the planes or in the airports; it was absent, though in the past I’ve had more occasion to experience it, even when going by myself. Traveling with another person who acknowledges your existence makes a huge difference, as I was reminded when Pippin and I were together on our way to Greece last month.
In my experiences of air travel in the last ten years, I find that people are generally not as friendly as they used to be, which I well understand. It’s an unnatural situation to be so close physically to so many other humans who are total strangers, and it’s hard to figure out how to maintain one’s emotional space, or to give the other person privacy of some sort, when there is pretty much zero physical space between you and the one in the next seat. I try at least to say hello or give a nod and a smile when we take our places, but fewer people than in the past are willing to make eye contact or even look my way.
Snack on Aegean Airlines
The whole situation leads us to go into survival mode, whatever that means for the individual. For most, it seems to mean watching as many movies as will fit into an 11-hour flight, escaping into those stories. I only watch a few minutes at a time of whatever I can see of others’ screens across the aisle or next to me, and seeing everything as a silent movie with no captions makes most of the stories appear ridiculous or inane.
In survival mode, I know I personally like being fed, which my child-self knows is essential to survival, though for my adult self it might actually be more helpful to keep a water-only fast. My child self wants comfort food, and was glad for the beef stew, lasagna and calzone. Even pretzels on a shorter flight are sustaining to the soul.
On my last long day of being in multiple airports and planes, for the first time ever when traveling, I realized I was feeling lonely, and was nearly brought to tears. But in getting to and from those airports, I also was blessed by two Uber drivers (one Greek, one Afghani) who were very companionable humans, with whom I was able to have positive and real, nourishing conversations, and my trip ended on that warm note.
I hadn’t thought to write about these things until I read the poem below (which is almost a prose poem, no matter), and it reminded me of the many times during my lifetime that I have been rescued in various ways on my travels. I don’t remember if I have been in a position to rescue any other travelers, though I do remember looking at a lot of pictures of his children that a man once showed me. I would say the same as Naomi: This is the world I want to live in.
GATE A-4
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”
Well — one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”
We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — from her bag — and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands — had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate — once the crying of confusion stopped — seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
Back in May, I wrote about how I had been given a nighttime airplane ride with my son-in-law as pilot. I have had the experience on commercial flights, too, and found it enthralling whenever we were flying low enough to see the patterns of lights down below. I wonder if I will have that chance again…
FLYING AT NIGHT
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death, snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care. All night, the cities, like shimmering novas, tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
Goldilocks is the nickname I am giving to the little girl who had her first sewing lesson from me yesterday. I was very nervous leading up to the appointed time. She’s only six years old, for one thing, but she’s been using a needle and thread (and even Scotch tape) to construct clothes for her stuffed gorilla toy and a naked doll she inherited. I hadn’t had a look at her stitches until our first class, by which time I had come up with a few ideas we might pursue. It seemed wise to have a few projects in case her attention span was as short as I imagined from what I know of her from church.
I picked Goldilocks up at school and brought her here, so we needed to have a snack before beginning our work. Offering a child cake and milk sounds like something a woman in a storybook would do, so I felt very romantic about it, and I didn’t mind changing the liquid offer to hot cocoa, it being a rainy day and all. This yummy marzipan cake came in a heavy foil wrapper all the way from Germany so that our Czech friend Jerry could give it to us for Christmas. I had stowed it in the freezer for such a time as this.
As it turned out, my student didn’t yet begin any of the projects I had in mind, which included a 9-patch potholder, a hat for her, a blanket for her gorilla, and embroidering a dish towel. She seemed to want to get some clothes on that doll (poor doll doesn’t even have a name), so we started on a skirt. I showed her how to plan for the right amount of fabric based on measuring the doll, and she took home a rectangle of flowered cloth which she had started basting along one edge. I will show her how to pull up the gathers and sew it to a waistband.
Earlier in the day it was raining when I first came downstairs and found “my” feral cat Jim sitting outside the sliding door with his fur getting sprinkled as he waited for me to feed him. I thought perhaps he would be willing to stick his head in out of the wet this time, so I set the bowl just inside the door, and went away a space. After some deliberation he did partly enter the house, so I took his picture.
I hadn’t put quite the usual amount in the bowl, though, so he waited outside again after finishing it. I added more food and set the bowl even farther into the kitchen. The temperatures have been higher lately and I hadn’t turned on the heat yet, so I didn’t mind leaving the door open for Jim for a little while. He came in again, and I busied myself building a fire on the other side of the room.
When I turned back around, he was sitting all the way inside on the rug, while he ate. But when he saw that I saw, he was greatly embarrassed, grabbed one more bite of food and ran out the door with it.
The sun is shining today, but again, the air wasn’t too cold, so I put the bowl inside, and once again he came part way in and ate it. When he had finished and was walking around the corner through the gate, I looked out the door, he looked back at me, and I told him to have a good day. He switched his tail. So we have leaped a great hurdle, Jim and I.
This morning I’ve been researching flights to take me across the continent in about two months to visit Pearl and family. It seems that the two airports I want to use have almost no direct flights connecting them. I had thought that if I paid enough money or reward miles I could make the trip less exhausting. Now I find out that not much can be done to make traveling easier, and I’m suffering a temporary setback in my excitement. I will have to focus on taking healthy snacks, and on the wonderful reading I can do. But for now I’ll just be glad I don’t have to go anywhere today.
Gladsome Lights 