There are an average of 60,000 people en route, by air, at any one time in the United States. When you travel by yourself, you’re bound to meet some of them. When you’re with someone, there is no outreach. But my solitude is evidently an invitation.
At JFK, I had an hour before my flight took off and, naturally, went straight for a cold one … for the start of a vacation occurs with the lone beer at the airport bar. There I walked to an empty table, and didn’t yet put my bags down when Kathleen and Matthew Gleason from Florida introduced themselves—a lovely couple on their way to Belgium to visit their fifty-year-old son and his family. They ordered hand-cut potato chips and put them on my table for me to eat (“Help yourself, doll.”). We sat there, learning about each other for the next forty minutes, and when I realized my flight was boarding, I hastily put away my novel that never got opened. Kathleen said to me as I hastened my good-byes, “Are you taken?”
“No. No, I’m not.”
“Leave him behind.”
I was about to pretend I didn’t know what she was referring to. But instead, I swallowed hard and said, “It’s hard.”
“Leave him behind, don’t waste your time. You’re absolutely delightful, and someone is going to snatch you up right quick.”
Only a complete stranger can say that—and evidently I can be read like a book. I liked to think of myself as mysterious and enigmatic. Ah well.
While waiting at the gate on my return trip, there was a man sitting cross-legged on the floor by the window using his laptop. I sat in disbelief that this eighty-something-year-old could still sit on the floor in such a pose as if he were a teenager. He appeared to be a veteran … the haircut, stance, demeanor. Then I realized what this tough man was wearing … a navy sweatshirt with a rainbow and a heart that said “Miracles Do Happen.” I trust the wisdom of his years, so I believe him.
