In October of 2008, while on my way to Bend, Oregon to visit my children and their families, I sat in Detroit Metro Airport waiting for the plane to Portland.
After a two-hour wait, they said we could board – as soon as those in the Colden whatever, those needing extra, etc., or traveling with, etc., were all settled. I passed the first class people, all trying not to look entitled, and entered the main cabin – three seats on each side of an improbably narrow aisle. I plopped into my window seat, shoe-horned in for the long haul.
An excruciatingly slow procession struggled down the aisle, searching out seats, stowing luggage, climbing over one another with apologies. Then most of them sat with the sort of determined resignation you see in hospital waiting rooms. Three of us were packed into our side of the aisle. Across from us, the seat on the aisle appeared to be the only empty one on the entire plane.
When the procession had slowed to a trickle, the man in the middle next to me suddenly leapt to his feet. He addressed a tall, dignified-looking black man who was folding his coat preparatory to settling into that empty aisle seat.
“Excuse me, Sir?” my neighbor said, “would you consider trading with me? My daughter is next to you there and she’s terrified of flying.”
The teenage girl gave him an eye-rolling, “Dad. Really!” look, but the newcomer allowed as how he could trade. The grateful dad thanked him, struggled out and plunked down next to his child with a satisfied sigh.
As my new partner settled, we exchanged a brief smile that said, “What can a person do?” He managed to convey that he would have preferred the aisle, but, hey . . .
As we pushed westward I set my watch back three hours and alternated between trying to see the ground and concentrating on my book. My partner gave his undivided attention to a sports magazine. There was a little flurry when I carelessly moved my arm a fraction of an inch and my teensy plastic cup of ice spewed all over the three of us. Since the water in the cup was long gone, we were able to wiggle and shake most of the ice to the floor while we were neutralized in tray-down position.
After an hour or two I noticed that the woman on his other side had gotten up, so I said to my neighbor, “Maybe, since she’s up, I can get out now for a bit.” He crouched in a kind of mock stand while I tried to scoot past with a minimum of body contact. But in his haste to make room he knocked his nearly full, uncapped, bottle of water onto her seat where it glugged enthusiastically. Horrified, he grabbed it. An attendant brought a few miniscule napkins. We did our best with the puddle on her seat, but the damage was done.
When she returned he offered to trade, but she was stoic, assuring him she’d be fine. There were no other seats available, so she folded a couple of blankets donated by sympathetic passengers and settled herself, doubtless trying not to put all her weight down.
Much later the trademark, laconic voice of the pilot came over the intercom saying, “Well, folks, hope you enjoyed the flight. We’re about to begin our approach to Portland. When we land, be sure you are in your seats with your seatbelts fastened. There are some pretty strong cross winds going on there. We should be on the ground in about 40 minutes.”
There was a collective murmur of, “Oh, oh,” but our craft remained stable. Nary a bump, not even through the lumbering dips and turns of landing. Not even when we heard the distinctive whine of wheels being lowered.
The ground rushed up at us and suddenly, “Wham!” The wind picked up the huge plane and slammed it down onto the runway, swatted it like a fly with such force that it made a gigantic bounce, fish-tailing to the side and back, then “Wham!” hitting it hard again causing another wild bounce before it careened mindlessly forward in what might have been the right direction.
Once we could tell that we were safely on the runway, everybody erupted with loud, nervous laughter, rapid-fire chatter, grins and high-fives all around.
Except for my neighbor and me. We looked down at our hands, joined together, locked in a rigid, bloodless grip. We laughed and said things like, “Look at that! We’re holding hands! Man! Talk about scared!”
But we didn’t let go, not right away. We were kind of frozen in place, maybe beginning to realize what had really happened here.
We’d had no time to think, no time to make any kind of decision. Whatever this was had come from eons ago when humans had to rely on one another just to stay alive. We had reached out to each other as people had done as long as man had been on earth.
When it was our turn to head up the aisle, we parted with brief goodbyes and a smile. I don’t know about him, but I walked out into the terminal with a renewed sense of how very important we are to one another.
I understood that we need to take care of each other, simply because at the most basic level that’s what humans do.
What a sweet story! You make such ordinary things come to life in your writing, what a gift.