Everyone eternally moans and whines and whimpers about the toil and trouble of flying, about all the things that can and do go wrong, but I have never seen a paean and elegy to the cool things that happen when you fly in airplanes and shuffle through airports, so for once let me sing a song of the excellent and lovely and heartbreaking and breathtaking things that happen, sometimes.
Such as: the gentle powerful smiling man on every third flight or so who without a word lifts bags into and hauls bags out of the overhead bins for everyone within reach of his burly arms.
Or the flight attendant who somehow remembers, on a single flight, who wanted hot water with one lemon and one lime, and who needed to chat briefly with a nurse about a possible ruptured eardrum, and which passenger is completing a 30-hours-in-the-air journey from Johannesburg and could really use a pillow which magically appears from the back of the plane even though there are officially no such things now.
Or the gate agent who notices the weary boy who does not step forth when military personnel in uniform are invited to board early, is carrying a duffel bag with his rank stenciled on it, is wearing dusty combat boots, has his hair cropped brief in accepted Army fashion, and is too honest to step forth because he is actually not in uniform; how that gate agent gestures the boy forward and boards him early, and even walks onto the plane moments later to shake the boy’s hand, all of which I notice because I am sitting behind the boy.
Or the pilot with his jacket pockets filled with winged trinkets for children which he hands to every child, male and female, on his flight as they step shyly past the cockpit, clutching their bear or mother’s hand and gaping in wonder at the pilot as tall as a tree and wearing the uniform the child by golly suddenly wants to wear more than anything when he or she grows up.
Or the man who switches seats instantly when hesitantly asked by a mother with two small children even though his new seat is exactly the worst on the plane, the one right across from the bathroom door.
Or the woman who switches seats instantly when asked by a man fresh from back surgery even though her new seat is in the last row and she cannot recline her seat which she very much wished to do.
And the man who politely asks his neighbors if they would like to read the newspapers or magazines he just finished. And the woman who endures her seatmate’s sleepy slumping on her shoulder with aplomb. And the young man who reaches for his seatmates’ cups and wrappers with a grin to pass them toward the aisle. And the young woman who knows full well the small boy across the aisle would love to watch the movie on her digiplayer but his dad doesn’t quite have the money so the young woman angles her movie just right for the small boy to watch the whole movie even though this means she must crane her head at an aching angle for two hours. And the flight attendant who gets down on his knees to find the charging port beneath the seats for a woman whose phone died. And the flight attendant who has given the same safety speech nine million times but still says it again slowly and clearly and intently because if she gets her message across there might be one person who will need that information one time and one life might be saved by speaking clearly with intent as if you cared, which she does.
And the people who wave you past when you are in a hurry to deplane, even though they are in a hurry, too, of course. And the attendants who wait quietly with wheelchairs for some passengers who were once spry but are no more. And the TSA man at the exit who catches your eye as you shuffle past, and even though he has seen thousands of people hurry past today and his shift is nearly done and no one has said hello to him, he smiles and says, “Welcome to Portland,” and he means it, too, which gets me to weeping again at the quiet grace of people, even in airports and airplanes, and maybe especially there.
Maybe the place you expect grace the least is where it lives most.
Novelist, essayist, and poet Brian Doyle was one of the College’s visiting writers last spring. His most recent book is Grace Notes, and he wrote “The Grace” after his journey home from Crawfordsville to his home
in Portland, OR.