I
was blithely talking about flying over Russia more than once in the last
week. While I was heading one
direction yesterday a hapless plane of people that could so easily have been my
daughters and myself, was shot out of the sky over the Ukraine. Every once and a while you check out
the morning news and it just hits you.
This sort of thing hasn’t happened in years, where some idiot has
targeted a civilian plane. I
haven’t checked but I seem to recall some plane being shot down this way in the
80s over North Korea. The photos
from the ground, with bodies, and smoke, and children’s things, 惨不忍睹[1]. The
New York Times has released chilling calls between rebel commanders and people
in the field, suggesting they had thought it was a Ukrainian transport plane
and, in this case, they made a rather extraordinary mistake. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/world/europe/us-officials-say-they-suspect-sa-11-or-sa-20-missiles-brought-down-malaysia-jet.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=lede-package&WT.nav=lede-package
My little one had been expressing her fears to me, mid
flight yesterday. “What if
something happens to momma’s plane?” And like anyone I told her that she and we
would all be fine. Every day we
drive a car along a highway we take infinitely greater risk statistically than
we ever do when we get in a plane.
If you think about it rationally, there is nothing you need to worry
about on a plane any more than anything else you do. Of course, every once in a while something happens and
it is terrible, but little things happen on the highway all the time with much
greater frequency. And it
may have been at that moment and it may have been not too far away, in that
Malaysian Airlines flight some dad from somewhere was having a similar
conversation with his child.
“Don’t fret about it. The
chances are infinitesimally small . . .” Peace be with all those tragic souls.
In their honor, all those people who were just going from
here to there across the continent like I just did, but never made it, I have
played a piece this morning over and over, whose title seemed a fitting
testimony. “Of Love and Peace” is
the title of both Larry Young’s sixth album and this, the second song in the
session recorded in 1966 there in New Jersey, not far from where I was
born. The brutality of
medieval Portugal which I’ve been so deep within, not really so very far at all
from this contemporary world of airports and complementary beverages and missed
connections. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Young_(musician)
I’m up early on our first day in Lisbon waiting for the sun
to come up. I’ve stuffed my head
with Portuguese history and now I can’t wait to set out. For me, there is an eternally exciting
feeling of seeing a new city, let alone one as fabled as Lisbon. I must strive not to exhaust my
kids. Yesterday we landed in
Frankfurt about 20 minutes late with about thirty minutes to get to our
connecting flight. “We’re not
running, we’re just walking briskly.
Very briskly.” I cut the
immigration line, with a forgiving older Chinese woman. Got to the pokey security checkpoint,
(why am I going through this again?
I never left a secure area!)
and there was a little boy who wouldn’t follow his mother through and
held up the line. The security
people were cajoling him nicely, but he kept walking around and not through the
metal detector. I was rather close to kicking junior in the pants. A man whom I’d assume of Turkish-descent
gave me one of the most thorough pat downs I’ve ever been through. “Sir we’ll
need to do your shoes one more time.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
By now our plane should have begun its boarding. An elevator down, a long walk
underground, and now, back up to, Terminal A. We’re A40, this is A16 or something. It’s all coming back to me. I’ve had salad at that shop. I’ve had a beer at that place once. And this walkway, with its elevated
moving walkways, in Terminal A, is interminable. My little one has sandals and I can hear than flapping
behind me, so I “know” they’re there.
Another turn, at A28 or so and a new endless hallway to confront
forward, all right, now I’m running.
And the worst moment is the arrival at A40. No one is there.
It can’t have taken off.
Where do I have to go? “No,
the flight to Lisbon is A38, right here.
It hasn’t started to board yet.”
And with the day, everyone’s up. Time to go get some breakfast. Glad its something we can all go do, in peace.
[1] cǎnbùrěndǔ: spectacle too horrible to endure
(idiom); tragic sight / appalling scenes of devastation
No comments:
Post a Comment