Fasten your seat belt

I never quite make it. On my last trip, I left a jacket in the Atlanta airport security area and went off to catch the train to my gate. As the train began moving, my brain did too. Let’s see: purse, suitcase, tote bag, jacket. Jacket! Uh-oh! I was not going to be comfortable in 40-degree weather without that. I headed for the train door in a mini-panic, rehearsing the way I would try to retrace my steps. Could I get into security backwards? Or would I have to start over. If so, would I miss my flight? Suddenly my jacket appeared before me, held out by a passenger from the shuttle bus I had taken to the airport earlier. “We thought you’d be wanting this,” she said with a smile.

You would think I’d have learned a lesson – and maybe I did learn not to leave my jacket behind, but today I was so busy gathering up my purse, shoes, laptop, tote bag, lotions, gels, and creams that I walked off without my suitcase! I didn’t even miss it until I had repacked everything else. Perhaps I was distracted by the crowds here.

I am writing this in New York’s LaGuardia Airport, where I was supposed to board a plane hours ago. But snowstorms sweeping across the Midwest have stranded planes full of passengers there who were headed this way, plus all the people here who would have been getting on them to go somewhere else — provided the rains and wind ever let up; weather here has also delayed planes and people. The airport police say there are 16,000 of us, and I believe it. There are bodies everywhere, filling all the chairs and most of the floor space. I have to step over them to go check on the status of my flight, while a kind woman watches my complicated luggage and holds onto my chair for me.

People are sitting, lying down, sleeping, playing cards; they are shopping, eating, drinking, using their laptops, and — this is the part I love — coping amazingly well. This airport may be hot, crowded, and noisy, but it is also harmonious.
Whenever I start worrying about the future of America, or obsessing about how far behind we are in technology, education, and infrastructure, I will try to remember this experience, because I think this is America’s greatest strength: When we are in trouble, when thousands of us — or millions — are forced to deal with difficulties, we pull together, not apart. We help each other. We take turns. We are kind and good-humored — and more. Remember those New York fire-fighters on 9/11? We die for each other. This is the America I love — the country for which I like to think that I too would give my life. We just need a reminder now and then. Tonight was mine.

Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.