Grace in Seat 19C (2008)

Grace in Seat 19C

            “If you are talking to me, please look at my face and speak clearly.  I am deaf in that ear and my hearing aid is in the aisle ear.”   “I am on my way to see my niece in Texas,” she said.  “It will be for the last time.  She has cancer in her lungs and in her liver.  But it will be a very good Thanksgiving.”

            All of these words came tumbling from the mouth of Dolores Small within the first two minutes of our short airplane trip together.  I knew she was not a seasoned traveler when she asked for help in unbuckling her seat belt to let me in to my window seat.  We watched together as the man across the aisle struggled in vain to put his bulky bag under the seat.

            “I thought we weren’t allowed to take our bags on-board,” said Dolores.  “I checked my bag at the gate.  Do you think that was alright?”  I turned slightly in my seat so that she could see my mouth and repeated what I had muttered before.  “He should have checked his bag at the gate.  What you did was right.  Your bag will be waiting for you when you leave the plane.”  She seemed to hear what I said and I am sure many others did as well, perhaps including the man with the big bag.  Though she seemed to understand, she tugged at the flight attendant who was helping the man in 18B deal with his big bag.  The flight attendant assured her that her bag would be waiting.

            I turned away. I took out my pen and my notepad and started to write.

            “Excuse me for being so bold,” she said, “but are you a teacher?” 

            “I was but I am not now.  Why do you ask?”

            “I don’t know.  You just have that look.  I don’t know anything, but I thought you were a teacher.”

            I put down my pen.  She seemed both sad and scared, or at least apprehensive about flying.  “You know lots of things, I am sure,” I said. “Please tell me about your niece.”

            “We were very close.  You see, I was an aunt before I was born.”  My mother had me late in her life—she was in her forties.  Her oldest daughter—my sister—got pregnant at the same time.  My sister had her baby first, so I was an aunt before I was born.”

            “My mother had nowhere to live.  It was just the two of us, you see.  So we lived with my sister and my niece.  That’s why we were very close. “  “Well, actually she’s more like a sister to me.  Later we lived with my brother.  There were two others, another brother and sister, but they both died.”

            “Did you have children of your own?” I asked.  “We have six,” she said.  “I loved them all dearly, but it was a challenge raising them.  It seemed like when one was just coming out of a stage, another one was entering a stage.  It got so I wanted to take a stage—right out of town.”

            Pointing to the writing on the seat back, she asked, “What does that mean?”  KEEP SEAT BELT FASTENED AT ALL TIMES.  SEAT BOTTOM MAY BE USED AS A FLOTATION DEVICE.   I explained what it meant and told her that the flight attendant would explain many things.  I agreed to explain to her afterwards what the flight attendant had said and what it meant.

            The plane took off and we continued our conversation.  “I know we will have a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of laughter because we have so much to be thankful for.”  “Why, I am thankful that my family gave me the money for my flight.  This is only the second time I have been on a plane.”

            She told me she lived on a small farm south of Roseburg, Oregon.  She had left her husband on the farm to deal with the chickens and the pig.  “We don’t travel much.  Just keep going with Social Security and the farm.”  “I do trust in the Lord, but sometimes that trust is sorely tried.”

            “My ten-year old grandson died.  No one knows exactly what happened.  He was standing by the side of the road when a pick-up truck came by.  Something sticking out from the truck caught his clothes.  The kids said he was just twisted round and round.”  She paused and added in a soft voice, “Just like a rag-doll.”

            “I got the call and went driving in my car to the hospital.  I went to the wrong one, but all the way there, I kept thinking Billy would be alright.  Then I said out loud, “I trust you, Lord.”  When I got to the right hospital, Billy was gone.  When they told me, I fainted.”

            The flight attendant came down the aisle, offering juice, coffee or water.  She asked for a glass of juice.  I helped her open her snack pack.  Then she continued.  “I was sore-sick with grief for many months. Then one day when I was sitting thinking about Billy, I heard a voice, clear as a bell.”

            “Dolores, did you not say you trusted me?”

            “That was all I heard.  I thought about it and then I got better.” “I remembered that voice two years later when my 12-year-old grand-daughter died in a car crash.”   

            The pilot came on the air.  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are encountering some turbulence.  The seat belt sign has been illuminated.  Please return to your seat and make sure your seat belt is securely fastened.”

            “I can hear the sounds and the words, but I can’t make out what he is saying, “ she said.  I explained what the pilot had meant and checked her seat belt.  I noticed she was still wearing her purse, the strap around her neck, and the purse securely fastened by her seat belt.  She had a cell phone, tucked in a purse pouch, right in the front.  I returned to my notes.

            “Excuse me for asking, but you seem like such a nice man, what are you writing?  That is, if you don’t mind telling me.”

            I explained that I had just been visiting my 89-year old father and was taking notes for my report to my brothers and sisters about the trip, his health and the conditions at his assisted living facility.  I told her that on each of these trips, I also tried to take notes on stories and memories that my father shared with me.  I exclaimed that he was blind and could not read as he used to.  When people asked him what he did all day, he would reply that he would sit in his chair in his room and remember.  They would ask, “Don’t you get bored?”  My father would answer, “I have a store house of memories in many rooms.  I never tire of visiting and going to another room and seeing what it is there.”  “Some of those memories he shares with me when I come to town,” I explained to Dolores.  “This one is called Trust the Sun.  If you would like, I can read it to you.”  I turned a little more in my chair.  Her eyes focused on me intently.

Trust the Sun

            At Nausika in the Washington Cascades, one valley over from Mt. St. Helens, we lived near the woods.  When I was four or five, I generally went into the woods with my older brother or sister, but I also went on my own since the road to school went through the woods.  The man in the woods warned me, “Trust the sun.  It will never lie to you.”

            One day, walking home from school, I stopped and went into the woods to collect ferns for my older brother to sell.  We would tie wood ferns, fifty to the bundle, and then sell them.  You stripped off the lower portion to provide a place to hold the ferns and to tie them up.  I only went in 40-50 feet, but the woods turn dark and deep very fast.

            After I had collected my bunch, I started back to the road.  I looked up and saw the sun, but it was in the wrong place of the sky.  Why?  I did not know.  I sat down on a log to think about it.  You may think it fair strange that a boy of six or seven would stop to think, but I did.  Then I remembered the words of the man in the woods.  “Trust the Sun.  It will never lie to you.”  Even though I wanted to go where I knew the road was, I trusted the Sun.  After walking only 40 or 50 feet, I came out of the dark woods and onto the road that took me home.

            I never saw the man in the woods again.  He died when Mt. St. Helens blew its top.

When I finished reading, Dolores said, “I know who the man in the woods was.  He was an angel.”  She then stared into space, like a sightless seer.  She murmured, almost to herself.  “Trust the Sun.  Trust the Son.”

            Though I did not ask her age, I could tell that Dolores had lived a long time;  perhaps as long as my father.  Her face was lined, her hair was gray and she had age spots on the backs of her hands. She seemed at the same time so alive and so at peace.  So I asked, “Your rules for living a good life?”

            “Live,” she said.  “Be active. Be cheerful.  Eat sensibly and do the crossword puzzle every day.”

            I reached into her seat pocket for the airline magazine.  When I opened it to the crossword puzzle, I noticed it had already been started.  “This one has been started.  I will get you mine.”  I took out the magazine from my seat pocket.  “Oh my, this one has been started too.”  Then the person sitting in front of us handed back a brand new copy of the airline magazine.  “Here, use this one,” he said.  Dolores thanked him and thanked me.  She started on her crossword puzzle and I went back to writing.

            When the plane landed, we left together.  I helped her find her gate-checked bag.  We entered the terminal and found the gate assignment for her flight to Houston.  As we walked through the concourse to her gate, we passed through the airport shopping mall.  I told her she could stop and shop before her flight.  Dolores said, “I have no need to shop.  I have everything.”

James E. McGuire

November 26, 2008