Flying

Not long ago I was faced with a conundrum. I signed a contract to appear at a national nurse’s conference in Orlando. I signed it before another opportunity to work with nurses appeared. No matter how I maneuvered my schedule, I was stuck with flying to get back to work with my new clients.

Oh, and I should tell you I don’t like to fly.

To feel completely at the mercy of companies and security and other things that are beyond my control makes me anxious. I take responsibility for my own messes (like falling asleep and missing the plane to Rome), but I don’t like theirs.

If I hadn’t signed a contract to appear at the conference, I could have talked myself out of the trip. In the end, there was no way around it—I had to fly. Despite my efforts to avoid the drama du jour on the daily news, it seemed that a current pain point is the connection between planes.

I thought I was being smart when I booked a very early direct flight. Sure, the time was inconvenient, but when I had to call on the parking lot angels to help me find one of the last available spots, I once again questioned my travel decision.

The escalator landed me in the middle of a security line that snaked its way across the lobby, appearing and disappearing around nooks and crannies.

I was lucky.  My TSA pass got me to a short line where the agent said, “I just heard that other line just topped 1,000 people.”

What happened? What happened to that age of transportation that seemed to work so seamlessly? That era was different in so many ways.

I was seven years old on my first flight but that was a different world. For that glamourous trip I wore my starched pink Easter dress with a hat and gloves and my little suitcase was free checked baggage. Now, I was sporting a heavily layered look so that my clothes, brochures and give away pens could all be squeezed into a backpack that could be jammed under the seat. Back then, I got a hot meal on glass dishes. Now, I provided my own package of cheese crackers. I’m still trying to figure out where in a seat space the size of a can of tuna my legs were supposed to go.

Returning Home

The conference went well. I did my presentation for the nurses, and, with dread, I turned my eyes to the trip back home. The trip here was relatively bland, but so many questions came and stirred my anxiety. If the security line was so long on the trip down, what would it be like here? When should I text an Uber? The sky was looking ominous. What would that mean for the flight?

One by one, answers arrived as the trip stretched out before me to become a long day of travel. The first text of many that would march across my phone screen that day came on the way to the airport. “Delay in departure.”

Those gray clouds brought rain and heavy lightning. Basic maintenance required for takeoff was impossible. Planes arrived but were unable to leave and created a bottleneck that took hours to clear.

The one-hour delay became two, three, four, five, and six hours. As the clock progressed, the waiting area grew thick with passengers. Our eyes scanned the departure screens. Our ears strained to hear muffled announcements from airport staff.

It became obvious to me that we no longer live in a hat and glove world.

The little girls in princess dresses and happy families that met me when I first arrived in Orlando were replaced by an eclectic group marching by. What I saw when I arrived was Fantasyland; where I was now was ‘Realityland.’

This parade of weary travelers wearing all kinds of different clothes and carrying a variety of bags and snacks reflects the ‘new’ travel. They bring with them many colors and nationalities. When I was a child, only people who looked like me took glamourous plane rides. Now travel opens us to the world.

Together these hundreds of people and I shared a desire to be safely at home in our beds, but we shared something else as well.

When we finally prepared to board the plane, I looked around at my fellow travelers and I realized something remarkable. Even though we were jammed into a relatively small space in a very unpleasant situation:

• The crowd stayed relatively calm, and there were no temper flares.
• Strangers chatted and as the evening progressed a camaraderie based on shared experience emerged.
• The babies weren’t crying.

Travel these days is different. The seven-year-old girl I was may have enjoyed the momentary glamour but the woman I’ve become doesn’t need its trappings. What is important is not the baggage I carry but how I handle it.

The anxieties that once shaped me now were comforted by:

• The kind strangers who assured me that they would wake me up if I fell asleep while waiting.
• The courtesy we showed each other as strangers as we waited in the long line at the ladies’ bathroom.
• The kindness of the fellow passenger who shared her supper with me.

Courtesy and respect haven’t disappeared like white gloves and hats. Nobody wanted to be delayed on their journeys home, but we stayed calm and made the best of it.

I’m kind of proud of us for that.