Air travel makes time do weird things.
Like always, I arrive at the airport early — even though this is Vermont, and the airport has only 13 gates. After a quick trip to celebrate my niece’s birthday, it’s time to head home.
For an amputee like me, everything takes more time: going through security, stopping at the restroom, adjusting my prosthetic, stowing my crutches in the overhead bin, and folding my leg into the airplane seat which — despite being labeled as “extra leg room” — does not seem spacious at all.
By the time we’re ready to take-off, it’s hard to believe I’m still where I started.
“Slip the metal fitting into the buckle and pull on the strap to tighten.”
The flight attendant is giving the safety demo, but I’m looking at her nails. They are perfectly smooth, polished the color of the ripest peach at the farmer’s market.
Later, over the beverage cart, I tell her I like them. She pours me water with a bit of ice and tells me she gets them done at a salon near Myrtle Beach.
Wait — she lives in South Carolina but flies from Vermont to Philly?
My mind fills with follow-up questions, but there’s no time to ask them. She’s already moved on to the next row.
The flight from Burlington to Philly takes less than an hour — and sometimes costs more than a trip to Spain. (On a plane, time does not equal money.)
The pilot announces we’ll be flying at a lower altitude due to “presidential activity.”
I sense the chorus around me. Eye rolls. Groans. Chuckles. Muted sighs.
Once upon a time, I taught at a school near the hotel where presidents stayed when they visited Philly. “Presidential activity” often held up our dismissal time. We froze the clock, kept the kids entertained in their classrooms till the motorcade passed.
I never considered that the president might also take up time in the sky.
My mom and I sit together in 10 A and 10 C.
She tells me about a long ago trip to Nassau to celebrate my dad’s completion of the Bar Exam. It was this exact week, back in 1969. On July 20, they gathered with fellow vacationers and staff on the grand staircase of the hotel lobby to watch, on a tiny black and white TV screen, as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
I was there too. In utero.
My mom (to-be) was 7 months pregnant.
“The hotel manager held onto my elbow whenever I crossed the lobby,” she tells me. “He wouldn’t let me walk alone. He was so nervous that I’d slip on the tile floor.”
On the day they arrived, that hotel manager had called them a taxi to go see the American hospital, in case my mom went into labor during the trip. She didn’t — but my dad needed the doctor for a bad case of sun-poisoning!
We’ve reached cruising altitude. It’s so low I can still see a carpet of trees on the ground.
The toddler behind us chatters away.
We can’t understand him. We can only hear his mom’s responses, so we piece the story together like a one-sided phone call.
“This is our short flight,” she says to him. “The next one is the long one.”
She sounds patient. And tired.
Across the aisle sits his big sister — barefoot, legs twisted like a pretzel, a small pair of Crocs neatly stacked on her pink backpack under the seat. She is plugged into an iPad. At 7(ish), she is already a seasoned traveler.
In time, I imagine, he’ll be one too.
Just not yet.
The necklace I’m wearing has a miniature photo of my dad.
It’s translucent, a cross between a locket and a crystal ball, a gift from my sister after he passed away.
I hold it up to the window, aim it toward the afternoon sky.
My dad is alight, smiling broadly from a summer ski lift in New Hampshire.
On that trip, my niece Dylan had just turned one.
On this trip, she turned 10.
Time flies!
The man and woman next to me are chatting nonstop.
She’s at the window: artsy with bold glasses, colorful clothes, and a woven bag. He’s on the aisle: athletic with a white t-shirt, board shorts, and knees wedged against the seat in front of him.
They don’t seem to go together, but they banter on like they’ve known each other a long time.
Then, as we begin our descent, I hear the woman say, “Oh! So you’re a girl dad!”
He nods sheepishly. “I also have three sisters.”
That’s when I realize I’ve got it all wrong.
They’ve only just met.
I unlatch my necklace and hand it to my mom. “Look toward the window,” I say.
She puts the charm to her eye. Squints into the sunshine.
“It’s like he’s right here with us!” she says.
It’s true. At this altitude, he’s alive. Healthy. Brighter than ever.
He could be sitting in our row.
On a plane, time tosses and turns, curls in on itself, and flows between our seats.
It connects us to strangers, weaves parts of their stories with our own.
Soon we’ll land. And gravity will put things (and us) back in order. We’ll walk up the jetway where time moves only in one direction — forward — step by step.
But in this liminal space, between here and there, we’re free to roam.
Rebecca
