“Hold it. It’s gone.”

Tucked into a window seat.  My wife is beside me, which is good, but she keeps trying to turn off my reading light.  I might prefer a stranger who didn’t take liberties.  My daughter’s are in the two seats behind.  We’ve got a long way to go.  Three flights: one across the Pacific, one down to Houston and another that leaves the US, flies over five countries to land in Managua in the middle of the night.  It should all be rather routine by now, but fortunately, magically it is not and I am still as excited as I was in my twenties, when expecting to land in a new country, a new city, for the first time. 

I’ve started “The Blood of Brothers” by Steven Kinzer.  We’ve spent the first fifty pages going over the events leading up to the over throw of Samosa.  I’ve read this progression now a few times in various readings since I sprung this idea, last summer.  What I’m drawn to in his narrative are his reflections of being there as a young reporter.  Staying with older reporters in a safe house, considering the murder of a fellow reporter.    

We have more protean problems here on the plane.  These old United planes still have only one or two screens for everyone to watch.  They are fitted out with plugs but the plugs never work.  My daughters have watched two movies on their lap tops and are now out of power.  I managed to get their chord to provide juice from the plug between my and my wife’s seat.  Now it has no juice.  And, they want me to hold it and position it and readjust it until some kind of current runs through.  “There!  Hold it.  It’s gone!  Do it again!”  I fiddle for a bit and then tell them to forget it.  This is a fool’s errand.  “I’m done.  Read a book!”

Now my older one has decided that flicking my hair, will be her revenge.  I reach up to stop them, which only goads them on further.  The map (which everyone must consider up there in front of us) has us flying much lower across the ocean than I would have imagined.  Usually we fly up to Siberia and then down over Alaska, and Canada.  If this map is accurate, we’re going what appears to be straight over the ocean, the way I’d always assumed took longer in the middle of a fat globe.  I’ll have to look up why it is the flight path’s can vary so much and whether or not it’s seasonal.

Soon it will be short sleeve shirt weather.   Soon we’ll be in the middle of this city by the lake.