An old Hindu woman sat across from me on the plane home to my parents. We were about to depart, and everytime I turned to look at her, it seemed like she was about to cry. She wiped her eyes, and her companion told the woman sitting next to her that she was visiting her daughter in El Paso, but that she was scared of flying. And sure enough when the flight attendants announced that they we were ready to depart, she started to tremble. The woman just took this little old woman in her arms and held her as our flight took off, while her companion, who I can only assume was her son, looked on and spoke to her, sometimes consoled her.
Plane rides always tend to be an adventure. I never know who will sit next to me, how many times people will bump into my shoulder, or whether that bag might actually fall on my head this time (hasn’t happened yet). Yet strangers from different areas and backgrounds can sit together and have the most incredible conversations, or they can ignore each other for that two hour flight.