Thoughts from a plane

There are too many smells on an airplane for a pregnant women. My hands are cold and I’ve got my eye on the closest doggie bag, just incase. Traveling has become the hardest part of my job. I’m rubbing my eyes, grateful that I did not wear mascara today.

The flight attendant is short with me when I ask for a ginger ale and I lean to Kirk and ask if I look funny, is something wrong with me? No, but you look ticked, he says. Oh. The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly, I think. It’s a quote I read somewhere and am aware that it is quite true of me.

I sigh and wish it was winter already. That would mean I would be good and pregnant and well over this first trimester. That would mean the holidays would be up and running, bringing pumpkin pie and peppermint with them. Winter would mean I would have socks on and a thicker jacket which would keep me warm on this cold plane full of overwhelming smells.

I clearly smell fresh hairspray and do not know who would spray hairspray in a plane. A babies dirty diaper, a mans cologne, brewing coffee, and a package of chips ahoy cookies someone is eating.

And hairspray.

They are turning the overhead lights off, revealing the time change we are crossing and turning my eyes to the pink and blue sky outside. This slows my breathing some. Kirk looks over at me and smiles. I smile back for maybe the first time in an hour and instantly feel better.

The mother daughter duo across the isle has finally ended their movie that they had watched on their portable DVD player without headphones and the volume on full blast so we all heard the music of what I gathered to be some dancing movie. finally I can hear my own music without the thump of a bass drum in the background.

The coffee is now the only thing I’m smelling and I realize that my shoulders have been tensed up for awhile so I try to loosen them up a bit. We are almost to our descent, the captain says.

Planes, trains, and automobiles, I think. Is that what my life has come down to? No, it has not, says a voice in my head. You are being dramatic, it says. And this was really a fine flight, just fine. We even got a row to ourselves with a seat to spare so I actually took a nap at the beginning of the flight.

Oh, life is good. Beautiful in fact. These people with their dancing movies and their hairspray are beautiful. A few rows up a camera flashes a picture of a baby and I hear it laughing with it’s mother. By now it is dark outside and the lights of the city are lining up on the ground below us as we descend. Breath deep, I tell myself, you are almost home. And oh, it was a good flight, I think. Very good.