Turbulence
Thirty-thousand feet above ground, a short story emerges.
I’m sitting next to a woman who is fast asleep—lips tightly pressed together—thirty-thousand feet above the ground. I often find that gravity, even as high up as I am, takes my lower jaw with it. My head bobs, my mouth slightly ajar, my neck aches as I try to find comfort and slumber this high up.
She’s spent most of our flight, though she is in the aisle seat, staring longingly out the window. I wonder what she yearns for. I make up a million stories in my head, none more poignant than the twisting of the wedding band on her finger. I think about how our longing shares a row on this airplane.
We’re flying cross-country, from New York to San Diego. Over our five hours next to each other, we don't share a single word.
I guess at her life—where she’s coming from, where she’s going to. Every twitch, squirm, and movement adds texture to the story I’m crafting in my mind. I don’t dare reveal that I’m carefully observing her. I chance a look out of the edge of my peripheral vision, only a sliver of her presence in view.
My parents met on an airplane, so it’s only natural that I do this. If marriage—the most intimate of relationships—can sprout in a too-tight seat thirty-thousand feet aboveground, my imaginary friendship can, too.
I imagine that she is returning home to San Diego. I imagine that she visited her family in New York City, just an hour train ride from where she grew up. I imagine that she is returning to San Diego to say goodbye to it, cutting a string in the invisible tapestry of her life.
Oh, wait, I think, I’m projecting. We share a row, I tell myself, not a life.
I resume gazing out the window, allowing my neighbor to rest in peace. My sojourn into her imaginary life has stirred up feelings of my own. Nostalgia has no airplane mode.
I remember graduation, the wistful pride. I remember this same flight path, more than a year ago, when I first moved west. I remember the young woman who switched her tassel from right to left, barely recognizable now.
So much life has been lived since graduating. I moved cross country twice. I started and quit a job. I grasped at certainty only to find unsteady terrain.
It was as if I’d been floating aboveground, my attempted roots poisoned by one force or another.
The woman next to me is jolted awake by a tremor from below us. Turbulence, the pilot says over the speaker, buckle up. I tighten the seat belt that is snug across my lap. I’m tethered to this big hunk of metal flying through the sky, beholden to its bumps and jerks. I find comfort in the predictability of what comes next.
The seatbelt sign.
The announcement.
The tightening of the leather strap across my lap.
These are rules I can follow, expectations I can fulfill. They’ll keep me safe. They’ll keep me tethered. I surrender control to the aircraft which shields me from the unsurvivable conditions outside.
I revel in the comfort up above knowing that there are no seatbelt signs nor pilot announcements nor safety demonstrations down below. It is the sheer power of life’s wave crashing over you again and again.
The woman next to me resumes sleeping, this time her lips slightly parted. Her breath comes in spurts, as if her lungs are never full. Her wedding band glints from the light pouring in the window. The plane continues to jerk.
I start to wring my hands, the plane’s movement becoming more disruptive. Outside, I can’t see anything beyond the dense white of a cloud. The seatbelt sign beeps again, but it is already on. The pilot tells the flight attendants to find their seats, which is exactly when you start to worry. The plane bounces once, twice, and I jump against my seatbelt. I pull the strap even tighter against my lap and wrap my arms around myself. I’ve experienced turbulence, I think, but what is the word for this? The pilot doesn’t speak again, assumedly tasked with keeping our aircraft in the air. Panic creeps in after feeble attempts at reason. I look at the woman next to me, finally awake. Our eyes meet. A worried glance passed subtly, no words, though enough said.
Brittle strangers become tender, connected in the face of fear and uncertainty.
My parents, once strangers, traversed similar terrain, turbulence or not. I can’t bear them a second thought because of the morbid goodbye that follows, ignited by another jolt in the air.
The woman next to me grasps my hand as we are both lifted out of our seats. Her wedding band is cold against my palm. We look down at our hands clasped and then up at one another, as if in disbelief. Another jolt and she squeezes tighter. She closes her eyes and leans her head against her seat.
We share a row, I amend my original statement, and this life.
We hold tightly to one another as the plane continues to jerk. I promise to never take a handhold for granted ever again. She becomes my tether at this moment. It is no longer gravity nor the airplane nor the safety demonstrations that ground me, but her sweaty palm in mine.
My life flashes before my eyes, but not the life that I remember living. There are only blurry visuals of this friend or that city, of the goodbyes left unsaid, of what–or who–I’m leaving behind. My perspective shifts. No longer were my roots poisoned, they were intact, though buried, the entire time.
The pilot’s voice crackles over the speaker. Folks, sorry about the bumps back there. We should be through this patch of clouds in just a moment. From there, smooth sailing, he says, smooth sailing.
Immediate relief. A sigh of held breath. Some faint clapping a couple of rows ahead. The montage of images and sounds and brief moments of time that I hadn’t remembered until now disappear.
My neighbor gives my hand another squeeze before dropping it in my lap. Tears well in her eyes and she looks toward the window.
I look too. The clouds are gone, sprinkled far below us. Light blue paints the rest of the sky. There is no longing any more, just relief.
The pilot is right. It is smooth sailing the rest of the way. We arrive in San Diego earlier than expected and deplane with ease. The pilot thanks us on the way out, apologizing for the turbulence. My neighbor and I don’t share words as we exit, only grateful glances and a reserved goodbye. I don’t know her name; I’ll never know her story; she’ll resume her stranger-status, as will I. But we clasped hands thirty-thousand feet in the sky, holding nothing but each other. Somehow, that was enough.
Until next time,
Kiera