Accents
People we meet
The captain of the United Airlines flight we took from San Francisco to Washington-Dulles airport announced matter-of-factly: passengers would experience some discomfort now that the plane was flying over Colorado. Indeed some discomfort, he called it, even as we swayed on our seats owing to terrible air pockets. The snow-capped, ruggedly beautiful mountain range was then on winter curse that December.
Methinks the modulated voice matched the control the man had for his office. Certainly in the brotherhood of those staid airline pilots in their stiff gold-buttoned uniforms on their way to take-off. Think calm, cool and collected. Nobody could be more poised. Oh, well, they are not the people I met, individuals mentioned in this column who added specks of spice to my life...consciously or subconsciously...by the mere fact of having conversed with them on certain aspects in both our lives.
The air pocket gave no quick reprieve, and the lady to my left had to close the book she was avidly reading. (To my right was a fellow half-awake, one I've known for almost fifty years...of course, the "significant other.") The turbulence over, we exchanged smiles of relief...proving all the more that in the face of threatening danger, our common humanity surfaces. All brothers and sisters not impervious to fear. Think "we are all in this together." It was Dec. 29 and we're both looking forward to celebrating New Year with loved ones.
The lady continued reading. Was it like a race to the ending of a Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) or a Stephen King (The Dream Catcher)? My curiosity was rising. What's the book about, I couldn't help asking. She showed me Leaving Church, a most unusual title that stoked up my curiosity even more. Did she become an atheist or an agnostic? She said the author abandoned the nitty-gritty of her church administrative duties. To come up even stronger in her faith, I surmised? By this time, she is Chili and I'm Julie. She works in an Episcopal seminary and need I say here that I've retired from a bread-and-butter job and am now doing the write thing for a hobby? (Doing the write thing was a column I wrote two years ago.)
Now for a taste of chocolate in its glorious array. Dec. 27 at the Scharffenberger Chocolate Factory, Deirdre, the excellent tour guide, delighted us with her gestures and humor as we took in sample after sample. I asked whether there ever has been a case of DUI because of chocolate intoxication. None, Deirdre assured us. The sales pitch: go inebriate yourself with all things chocolatey this Holiday Season.
Back at the Naia, Dec. 2, check-in time was some hours away and the young woman beside me was absorbed in her cell phone. When she put it down, she inquired as to the et cetera of a fellow traveler. Do I have to say it here again? Well, let me just let on that I was on my way to baby-sitting a lovely granddaughter named Danika Raine. And she, Rina, young lawyer from Midsayap, Cotabato, is taking a well-deserved vacation at her sister's in Dubai after hurdling the bar exams.
Back still further, from the Mandurriao airport to Manila, beside me was Prescilla, on the first leg of her triple flights to Canada. A midwifery graduate, she was a caregiver in Hong Kong for nine years, and is now taking on a renewable two-year contract in Canada. Prescilla is our typical OFW...caring, hardworking, providing a better life for the folks in the homeland.
And three years ago, in the flight from Arizona to Maryland Dec. 28, 2003 to be exact, I was seated beside Time magazine's Person of the Year, the American Soldier, subject of a column I wrote immediately thereafter. "Beside me was a youthful face that has tasted but little of life's trials and tribulations. Sort of a misfit in soldier's attire who would regard war no more than a tussle in a soccer game...Along with his companions, he was on a two-week furlough from their Iraq assignment...He said he's 22, indeed before him a long road strewn with vagaries of life only heaven knows what." And I quote myself further: "Weeks before, Time mentioned those being considered for its annual choice among which was the American Soldier, and Rudy and I guessed right because the soldiers were the top newsmakers of the year. They were in the papers daily since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003. The radio, the Internet, the TV, and all of print media screamed of the horrors of war with the soldiers coming out whole, maimed, or in a box. [They bore the duty of living with and dying for a country's most fateful decisions,] and to this day, continue to bear that duty in what seems to be a never-ending war that Iraq has turned out to be."
I think Alfred Tennyson, in his poem Ulysses (Homer's mythical hero) stated it for all of us: "I am part of all that I have met." In stunning significance or in passing minutiae, people we meet enrich our lives.
And, before I throw away traditions, etc. that stunted 2006, HAPPY NEW YEAR from this comeback kid!
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)