COMING IN ON FLIGHT 79

From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

 

COMING IN ON FLIGHT 79...“You know what the trouble is, don’t you?” the man in the aisle seat in my row said to me. My head on its stiff neck cranked in his direction, an enquiring eyebrow lifted in irritation. It had been my habit over the years to avoid airplane conversations. I used such occasions to let loose full-bore my intrinsic reserve. “It’s all that heavy baggage stuffed top to bottom in the hold,” the man went on to explain. “You’d think that people would learn by now that if they want an easier takeoff and a smoother flight, they’d pack lighter than before. Seventy-nine of these flights and nobody seems to have learned that lesson—nobody but me that is. This is the extent of my gear,” he said as he placed a small leather pouch no larger than his open hand on the empty seat between us.

            “Cheeky fellow,” I said to myself and then turned my face back to the window. All of a sudden, fuming, black clouds split open and barraged the airplane with a torrent of rain. The vessel rose and dropped, rose and dropped like a rollercoaster car. My knuckles white on the armrests, I nearly lost my breakfast. I stole a glance at my seat companion and was astonished at his utter composure. His hands folded softly in his lap and eyes closed, his chest expanded and contracted in gentle, easy breaths. It appeared that his experience of our journey was the opposite of mine.

 

 

            Moments that seemed an eternity passed by and the plane leveled and found its balance for a while. I thought it expedient to discover the source of the man’s serenity. “What’s your destination?” I inquired.

            “As far as the plane will take me,” was his reply. “Further along than last year,” he added.

            “I never seem to get very far at all from my starting point,” I admitted.  “There have been trips where I even went backwards.”

            “Same here,” he confessed.

            “What’s different this trip?” I asked.

            “I had a dream. I take messages in dreams to heart. In the dream, a voice told me flat out that I had to lighten my load if I expect to ever get where I’m supposed to go, and especially to get off the ground for my very last trip, which the voice told me is still far in the future. So I started unloading my enormous suitcase.”

            “Unloading it of what?”

“The voice told me to begin by dumping outworn regrets and then pointless guilt; childish resentments and envies and jealousies and grudges; unspoken apologies; unattended amends, and pernicious unforgiveness. Getting rid of those things alone would lighten the load a whole lot. But that wasn’t enough—not nearly enough. There is this thing called ‘yearning,’ that wistful longing for things that will never be. Do you know what I mean?”

“Do I ever?!” I answered. I pushed back into my seat, closed my eyes and thought about all my companion had said. Without a doubt, unforgiveness would continue to stick to me like glue. And must I accept that I will never live in that villa-of-my-dreams in Tuscany; that I will never know if so-and-s0 really loved me; that I will never be sure that my children will be okay without me? Hardest of all will be to give up agonizing over those unfinished things: the paintings I will leave undone; the poems, essays, blog posts, and books I won’t complete.  

If I rid myself of all those things, I guess my suitcase will be pretty empty—probably not entirely empty, because I’m quite sure nobody gets out completely clear and clean. But maybe I can get it down to a small pouch like my companion’s. If I keep chiseling away so that by the end of this spiritual journey known as ‘my life,’ maybe, just maybe I will be as weightless as a butterfly, and who knows how wonderful my final flight will be and where it will take me?

“Happy 79!” my companion said to me.

“How does he know I’m 79?” I asked myself. Just before I drifted off to sleep, I remembered that nobody boarded Flight 79 any other way. Outside the window, the storm raged again and I was no longer afraid.© 

 

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GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS

A Spiritual Odyssey

Readers were introduced to American Nicholas Plato in multi-award-winning author Linda Lee Greene’s A CHANCE AT THE MOON, which is available for purchase at https://tinyurl.com/3dc75u6p. In GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS, A Spiritual Odyssey, Nicholas boards a plane for Sydney, Australia with bags that are stuffed full of anger and heartbreak and other life-defeating issues. Little does he know that he is arriving at the time and place to empty his baggage, and to risk himself to love.

A blend of visionary and inspirational fiction with a touch of romance, this is a tale of Nicholas’ journey into parts unknown, both within his adopted home and himself, a quest that in the end leads him to his true purpose for living.

GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS is available in eBook and/or paperback. Just click the following link/URL and it will take you straight to the page on Amazon on which you can purchase it.

 

https://www.amazon.com/GARDEN-SPIRITS-POTS-SPIRITUAL-ODYSSEY-ebook/dp/B09JM7YL6F/

 

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HER RED-PAINTED TOENAILS

 From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

 I am the eldest of my generation of exceptional women who dominate my family, and from early on I have taken my “first-born” status to heart and shared my “greater” experiences with my younger counterparts. It began the day I took my cousin, Connie in hand and showed her the ropes regarding her approaching womanhood. Connie was no more than eleven at the time. I was fifteen. Connie’s doting and seriously smart little sister, Cathie was also in on the private confab I maneuvered that fateful day so long ago.

“Do you know what a ‘p****d’ is?” I inquired of Connie, my voice a whisper and conspiratorial, as if giving away a state secret. Her exquisite head crowned by a mass of brunette tresses, lowered and shadowing the softest doe-eyes ever in creation, Connie looked up at me as if I was the most ridiculous person on the planet. “Why, everybody knows it’s a dot at the end of a sentence!” bookish Cathie inserted impatiently, her lovely blonde forehead crunched in dismay and disappointment at the utter stupidity of my question—disappointment because they were relying on me to clue them in on the mysteries of life and the ways of the world. Somehow I reassured them of my competence and pressed on. Minute after minute passed by as I spelled out to my two little cousins all the graphic details that I knew of the female reproductive cycle and its messy consequences. Her cherub mouth curled down at the corners in utter disgust, Connie vowed, “Well, I ain’t agonna do it!” I tried to make it clear to her that Mother Nature allowed her no choice in the matter whatsoever, but still Connie was unmoved and demanded, “I told you! I ain’t agonna do it!” She just was not about to let the thing push her around.

Time proved me right in my early vigilance over Connie’s development. Her girlhood to womanhood transition happened at mach speed. Marriage, children, divorce, all of it came very fast and early to Connie. And thereafter as a single working mother, she had no easy time of it. But no matter the challenges, she was a fierce and gutsy fighter.     

Well into our forties and despite not having seen each other for a long time, we were happy to discover at a family gathering that our old friendship was intact, in large part because of our similar journeys and comparable circumstances. Both of us were single, empty-nesters by then, and in many ways groping our way into middle-age.

Still a raven-haired beauty done-up to perfection from head to toe, gold-hoops winked at her earlobes and an assortment of rings flashed on her fingers in time with her animated exchanges with person after person. She and I found our way to each other and settled into a quiet corner away from the crowd, because Connie wanted to talk to me privately. That time she did most of the talking, confiding to me that she was dealing with severe depression. Always an entertaining storyteller, she chose a creative way of explaining her concerns to me. She said, “There’s a big old jukebox where I work, and there ain’t nothin’ but mournful old country songs on it. Tammy Wynette and that D-I-V-O-R-C-E song about how she’s tryin’ to keep her little boy from knowin’ his daddy’s gone wails out of it almost all the time. And then sad Patsy Cline is Fallin’ to Pieces over some man she wants but can’t have. That old George Jones bawls like a baby about breakin’ up with some woman. Nobody else but Cathie knows that I went to see a psychologist. She told me to stop listenin’ to sorrowful songs like that. She said that they don’t do nothin’ but make me sad and keep me rememberin’ all the bad things that happened to me.”

“I never thought of it that way, but I guess it makes sense. People are influenced by their surroundings.”

“That’s what the psychologist said. She said that songs like that bring me down. She said it’s like livin’ with an old sad-sack all the time.”

“Have you asked your boss to put different music on the jukebox?”

“He don’t care. He told me that his customers want sad songs and that’s what they’re agonna get. He told me to quit complainin’.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“I’m agonna get me another job, that’s what! And ‘til I do, I’m agonna put cotton balls in my ears. I need to get out of there anyhow. My boss and other men there, they’re always pawing at me. I spend half my time dodgin’ men’s passes and slappin’ their hands away. It ain’t no decent place for a good woman to work.” In a reversal of roles, Connie was the teacher and I the student that day, for I was also “putting up” with situations that were not good for me. The ME TOO movement was only a longed-for dream back then.

On dog-tired feet and aching back and fingers worked raw, Connie had raised her two girls on her own. It was uncharacteristic of her to give in to tears over it. On the contrary, she was normally adamant about and masterful at putting a brave and happy face on her situation. As when she was a young girl and I tried to talk her into accepting her reproductive fate and she was having none of it, Connie was a reliably fierce and gutsy fighter.

Connie’s grit also came through in her iron grip on hope—hope that she would beat the illness that month after month of her 63^rd year was determined to snuff out her life. The final proof that she would not let life push her around was her pretty feet with their red-painted toenails that peeked out of an opening of the blanket on the hospice center bed on which she laid and from which her spirit ascended on an August night of 2011.

Whenever I think of Connie now, I see in my mind’s eye her red-painted toenails and the gold of her heart. One never knows from whence or from whom the spirit of inspiration makes itself known.

I invite you to use the reply space below to pay tribute to an inspirational person or incident in your life.©

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The above essay is Linda Lee Greene’s creative rendition of true events and commemorates the birthday of her cousin, Connie.

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Multi-award-winning-author, Linda Lee Greene’s novel, GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS is based on the true story of the family or origin of Connie and Linda. Paperback and eBook versions of the novel are available for purchase worldwide at http://goo.gl/imUwKO   

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