Flying Home from Puerto Rico

July 24, 2007 Flying Home from Puerto Rico


The interesting thing about airplanes is that a stranger sits next to you for four hours and by the time they leave the plane you feel like you had a glimpse of their life and a piece of there worries and joys. It is very odd this feeling of intimacy for just minutes and as they step out into the isle and drift into the crowd that streams daily into the concourse and you will never see them again.

And so it happened on the plane home from Puerto Rico. A young man sat next to me with his wife and two children in another part of the plane. He spent the next four hours trying to strain over the seat to see if they were OK and wishing they were all together. I would have traded with her but then Lew and I would have been separated and I would have been sad. Across the isle were two young men who hade enlisted in the US Army and were traveling with their recruiter to boot camp. They talked about how nervous they were. They seemed so scared. I wonder what will happen to them? I will never know because that little sliver of their life is real to me for only a brief moment.