Side by Side

I wasn't ready.  In fact, I had a near panic attack on the way to the airport (or maybe that was the malaria medicine).  I'm going to make a shocking analogy now, so prepare yourself.

I felt much like I imagine Bethenny Frankel-Hoppy (if you don't get the reference, it doesn't matter) must have felt when her water broke a month early.  She had no "birth plan," the nursery wasn't ready, and she had learned how to put a baby in a car seat just the day before.  Babies don't come when YOU are ready.

But when exactly did I get pregnant? (Still in the analogy here, take a breath.)  I suppose it was back in March when I took a job working for a non-profit in India.  But no amount of practical preparation could have made me ready for this.  Or at least that is what I think my body was trying to tell me as I struggled to catch a breath as my poor father tried to comfort and distract me on our way to IAH.

On my first leg to Detroit I sat next to a quiet, bookish girl who said hardly a word to me, yet her presence began to give me enormous peace.  I thought, "I love this stranger.  She understands the unspoken, yet incredibly important, sitting-next-to-someone-in-an-airplane guidelines."  She just sat there, quietly reading her book, minding her own business, only briefly flashing me a friendly "this is awkward to be sitting so close to you when I don't even know your first name" smile.  I understood completely.  She only piped up to tell me kindly, yet firmly, that I was indeed stepping (quite forcefully) on her foot.  "Oh my goodness!  I'm so sorry!" I said again and again.  This was a breach of contract: you are not supposed to physically harm fellow passengers due to your idiocy.  She laughed nervously and dove back into her book. 

But there we sat, and there we flew, side by side, and I suddenly felt less alone.  I remembered that on the other side of my travels, there would in fact still be... people.  I am not alone here, or ever.  A nervous smile, a stepping on the foot, these are the actions that can tie us all together when there seems to be nothing else.