I’ve Got You By Laura J. Oliver

I was on a United Airlines flight from Dulles to LAX the day after a major ice storm in the Northeast had closed a third of the country’s airports, and the airlines were playing catch up. My flight was delayed, all of us already onboard, waiting to leave the gate. Our pilot came on the intercom giving periodic updates as to our status.

“Folks, we’ve closed the doors and are ready to push off here, but we’ve been told we have to wait for 13 pieces of luggage. Apparently, some of you were late.” No one made eye contact with anyone except the people they’d boarded with, hiding the culprits’ identity. But over the next 15 minutes, the captain came on less and less frequently with updates, more irritated each time. Finally, he reported, “Uh, folks, we’re not waiting anymore.”

The cabin lights dimmed, and the plane rocked slightly, then began the slow push back, the careful turn, the taxi toward the runway. I was relieved because I had a connection to make in LA, but I hoped my suitcase wasn’t one of the 13 we were leaving behind.

We accelerated toward takeoff, runway edge lights whipping by, each passenger in his own way preparing for that moment in the race for ascent when you feel the rear wheels leave the earth. What is it about that moment? Do we somehow know it’s like dying? Finally free of the restraints of both our own gravitational body and the earth’s?

But we didn’t take off. Instead, the plane suddenly decelerated and powered down to a stop. After a moment, the pilot explained: “Folks, Air Traffic Control isn’t happy about us leaving without the bags. Looks like we’re going to sit in a penalty box for a while.”

So, on my trip to California this spring, I decided not to check luggage. It was so much easier not to go to baggage claim, where passengers bunch and bump at the carousels like impatient cows milling at the trough. The only difficulty was lifting my carry-on into the luggage bin over my head. I couldn’t get it up over the lip, but a kind passenger several seats away intuited the struggle wasn’t going to go my way and moved around people clogging the aisle as passive as logs to offer a hand in the nick of time. I still love him. No, seriously. I love him.

I always take a seat on the aisle so I can get up without bothering anyone. Southwest 5461 was packed, but as passengers boarded, I wanted to use the restroom, and as I was seated so close to the front, I decided to go for it. There was a lovely girl in the window seat next to me—young enough to be my youngest daughter–with long dark hair like Emily’s. She was wearing a beautiful, three-diamond engagement ring, and I’d seen her Facetiming her fiancé on her tablet. He looked so affable—a big guy with reddish hair.

Seats aren’t assigned on Southwest (although they claim they are changing this policy), so I asked my seatmate if she could be sure no one else took the seat in the few minutes I’d be away. She smiled—“of course,” she said—“no worries.”

I maneuvered my way up the aisle of boarding passengers like a salmon to discover a pristine restroom in that rare spacetime anomaly in which it had not been used since the pre-flight cleaning. I then made my way back to my seat, but when I approached, I saw it had been claimed by an enormous backpack. I paused, uncertain what to do, when the girl glanced up, “Oh, that’s mine,” she said, lifting it, “I wasn’t going to let anyone take your seat,” she said, laughing. I must have looked relieved as I sank down and searched for my seatbelt. She leaned over, “I’ve got you,” she said and went back to work on her laptop.

She’s got me, I thought, ridiculous with gratitude. When you are traveling alone, little kindnesses are big. Supersized, actually.

Eventually, my seatmate put her work aside and began scrolling through wedding dresses. We didn’t say one word to each other for the next five hours, not until we started our descent. I developed this inflight protocol after years of making the nearly 13-hour flight from LAX to New Zealand after having already flown five hours cross country. Don’t start a conversation with your seatmate until the landing gear is down. There is a swimming pool salesman on board NZ 8 whom I suspect is still talking. He probably hasn’t even noticed we’ve landed, and I’m back in America.

“When’s the wedding?” I asked my seatmate as we descended over Baltimore.

She smiled, seemingly pleased to be asked. “October,” she said.

“The dresses you were looking at are gorgeous,” I said. “You will be a beautiful bride.”

We hit the tarmac with a thump, and the wing flaps caught the air to slow us. As always, it felt as if the engines powered in reverse- as if parachutes had deployed behind us. Five hours in the clouds and earth had reclaimed us.

The flight attendant came on to thank us for flying Southwest. “If you are connecting to another Southwest flight,” she said,” be sure to check the arrivals and departures board at the top of the jetway when you enter the terminal, as gate assignments can change.

 “And if you are connecting to another flight that’s not Southwest…how can I put this?… We really don’t care what happens to you.”

I pulled my carry-on down, laughing.

“Have a lovely wedding,” I said, but I meant, Have a beautiful life. Because unlike our flight attendant, I did care about her. May whatever baggage you’ve brought into this partnership be dispatched with grace. May you never miss a flight and your delays be minimal. May you have as little turbulence as possible. May your losses be small and your love be big and resilient. Keep your seatbelt on.

In October, I will wish that lovely young woman a sunny day for her wedding and a marriage that stays aloft.

As for you, may there always be someone in your life to say, “No worries, I’ve got you.” May you never miss a flight, lose your luggage, or pick the beef entré.

And may love be waiting at the Arrivals Gate.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

Laura Oliver will be reading her work at the Stoltz Listening Room at the Avalon Foundation in Easton on April 24th at 6 pm as part of our Spy Nights series. Tickets can be purchased here.