When you are up in the air, some thirty plus thousand feet above TV screens and magazines telling you how you should look on this day, any day, you become a free bird, suspended in your own chirpy little songs, lulled by the engines, bounced around by finicky air currents.
What a feeling! Zipping through dark skies with lights below and stars above, moving ahead to obligations and habits, but indulging none of them just yet. Think of it – you are there along with a handful of others, trapped - yet free, seemingly still - yet moving forward at terrific speeds.
It is perhaps for this reason that you do not say no to the warm chocolate chip cookies that are offered to you by the Midwest Airlines flight attendants. No one says no to the cookies (a signature Midwest Airlines treat). No one. I watched the flight attendant roll her cart down the aisle. Hands reached out, passengers sighed with contentment. The cookies. When all is said and done, at the end of the day, you can find comfort in two large cookies, warm and gooey, wrapped up in a napkin.
15 hours ago
Are you sure it's not "Grandma's Airline" that you are flying?
ReplyDeleteOn my last flight I indulged myself by diving head-first into a hugely thick book and only looking up periodically to make sure my husband was managing the children OK.
ReplyDeleteI love that trapped-thus-free feeling that flying imposes. I can't do much else so I might as well escape into this book... it was one of the nicest flights I've ever had, and that's really saying something considering the 3 kids.
We all could've used some cookies, though. Man those sound good.