picnic

Every day I take the highway home. Four lanes of inconsistent speed and frustrated drivers just trying to get home to appreciate the few hours they've got left in the day. It's slow every day unless I'm driving home late at night.

Today something was different. Everything was slow, people were honking at each other, and even I grew tired of my air conditioner deciding to turn itself off. This is all the usual. What was new was the cause of the today's slowdown. Usually, it's a wreck. Sometimes it's just the natural confusion of hundreds of cars all with their own plan trying to be the fastest instead of making way and cooperating. Today, it was bears.

Some loud and careless truck had managed to lose a plain cardboard box right in the middle of the highway. In what I can only guess was the chaos of the impact, bouncing off a windshield as a car swerved, the tape could no longer hold in the contents, and stuffed teddy bears all in different vivid colors exploded onto the highway. When I drove by the incident had already passed, and what remained were bears - blue, yellow, purple, red, all sorts of colors, laying motionless on the packed road.

awake on a plane

Night is just a big shadow. I rolled the idea around in my head. Planes are little boxes full of forced meditation for me. I can't sleep on them, no matter how long the flight, no matter how drowsy I try and make myself. All of us strangers flew from day into night somewhere over the East coast, a physical transaction leaving the sun behind for dark and quiet.

When you're moving through nighttime, flying hundreds of miles an hour over the cold miles of Atlantic, time takes far too long to pass. I got to know the passengers around me even though they were asleep, devising stories in my head about where they were from or what they'd had for breakfast. The guy to my right was heading home after a short business trip to Dallas (why else would you go there anyway?), where he hadn't even had time to have a decent meal. An old couple nearby were traveling the world, trying to fit it all in while they still had the time. A little girl near me had as much trouble trying to sleep as I did, and she leaned over to see what I was playing on my DS, never saying a word but watching intently.

And then the sky lightened. We hurtled toward the sun while the light turned the clouds below us into a landscape that I could have walked on. The tiny world inside the capsule of the cabin woke up, stretched, yawned, and drank complimentary orange juice off of a cart pushed by an aging flight attendant who had circled the world hundreds of times.

When we were about to land, a special announcement was made amidst the usual instructions to buckle and place our tray tables in the upright position. Today was Linda's last flight. After thirty years of service, thirty years of flying around the world serving small cups of orange juice and pre-packaged dinners, this very flight was Linda's last. A smattering of applause sounded out, just a few people clapping after thirty years of what I know must be one of the toughest jobs in the world. I felt special then, to see this lady cry and thank the passengers nearby.