Tag Archives: traveling

Hope From My Fellow Travelers

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Scott and I are in that back-and-forth serpentining line to get through security at the airport. I have a smile on my face. I’m trying to maintain this as my default face. Sometimes, as people wind past me, they respond with their own smiles to my smile. I love when that happens. Connections!

One man – maybe our eldest son’s age – glances up and sees my smile and smiles this sweet smile that contains joy and humor and kindness. A healing smile. When we pass each other again, I point out to him that we’ll be passing each other again soon, and we’ll get to smile more smiles. He starts laughing. The next time we wind past each other I tell him that this looks like it will be our last smile-exchange. He grins and says, “It’s been a pleasure!”

We meet again at that place where we need to load our stuff into bins. There is a shortage of bins, so my smile partner and I go and find bins to give to the people behind us. When we get through the people-scanner machine and the baggage-scanner machine, we meet again on the other side of security. We introduce ourselves – he says his name is “Kareem” and I (who have now mastered the comedic timing of presenting my name just right), pause before saying, “Karen.” He starts laughing. He says he’s bound for Michigan, and I tell him we’re on our way to Pittsburgh, and we wish each other safe travels before parting.

When Scott and I get seated on the plane, we discover that there’s an empty seat on the other side of us. This is sort of miraculous – our plane is completely full, except for that one seat. When it comes time for the flight attendant to do the safety presentation, she sees the empty seat and uses it as her staging area. She is fun. She and Scott, who’s sitting in the middle seat, banter cheerfully for a bit, before the safety presentation starts. For the first time in years probably, I am glued to the safety presentation. Every so often she looks over at me and sees my rapt attention, and starts grinning. When she finishes I tell her she did a FANTASTIC job! “I should have videotaped it!” I say, and she starts laughing.

The flight is uneventful. As I look down on the earth 30,000′ below, I send out love to all the humanity passing below us. I feel the plane embraced in Love. I see all the people in it are expressions of Love. We are in a bubble of Love.

When we land, we need to take the underground train to get to our rental car. As we load into the train, a sweet brown-skinned woman of about my age gestures to the pole she’s holding onto, and invites me to share it with her. Kindness. Everyone taking care of each other.

I have found hope for the world in my fellow travelers.

I Came Back Restored

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My trip to visit my son, his wife, and my granddaughter only lasted three days, but I was living in a whole ‘nother world inside of those three days. I came back restored.

Because I wanted to travel light and didn’t want to have to worry about carry-on baggage or trying to get all my electronics out of my backpack when I went through security, I didn’t bring my laptop or ebook. I didn’t listen to news, didn’t watch television, and, other than posting some quick pics from my cellphone, I pretty much stayed off of social media.

It was AWESOME!

The son and his family live in Venice, California, and we took long walks together over the canals and down to the beach, past vibrant murals and artsy boutiques. My granddaughter, little Linh, pointed out a white egret stepping along the edge of the canal and we enjoyed watching him as he foraged for lunch. And then Rigby the pup came up to us with a big smile and a wagging tail for a pet on the head.

We walked to the Erewhon Market and were greeted with a friendly smile at the door by Russ, who told me that the market has a lot of people named Russ there. “It’s like a Russ magnet,” I said. And he laughed and agreed.

On my last morning in Venice, Christina and Linh brought me with them to the Linnie Canal Park for a music program for toddlers. The four young women who led the program sang with the children, brought out instruments for them to play, and led them in fun dances. Music and dance and toddlers laughing together! That, my friends, is healing.

My son drove me to the airport, parked, and walked me in. I saw a couple of security guards standing at the bottom of an escalator and asked them where I needed to go. They smiled at me, and one of them asked me if I had any baggage to check (nope!) and asked to see my boarding pass on my phone. Then he told me I could just go right up the escalator, turn right, and get in the general security check line. I told him I knew there’d be people to help me at the airport, and thanked him. I asked him his name and he said “Alex” and then he asked me my name and I said, “Karen, of course.” He started laughing, and wished me a good flight.

My son and I hugged good bye at the bottom of the escalator and I made my way to the security line. I watched to see what the people ahead of me were doing as they got to the security conveyer belt. I took two bins and, trying to look like a I fly on planes every week, sorted my backpack and purse and jacket in the bins. I turned to the man behind me and asked, “Do I look like I know what I’m doing?” and he grinned and said I did. “I’m just copying all the people in front of me,” I confessed, and he laughed and said that’s what we ALL were doing.

When I got up to the security lady – a woman of about my age who’d been using a curt voice with the people in front of me – I pointed to my bins and asked her, “How’d I do?” She put her curt voice aside and smiled and told me it looked like I’d done a good job.

I was feeling hungry and went in search of food. I stopped at the Wahoo’s to order a quesadilla. The woman in front of me in line must have thought she was taking longer than she should because she turned around and apologized. Including the cashier, I said, “No! You’re both doing a great job!” And they smiled at me.

I ordered my quesadilla and waited near the pick-up counter. The cashier called out the number of the woman who’d been ahead of me, but I could tell she hadn’t heard it, so I yelled, “Forty-seven!” – which she heard. The cashier thanked me for yelling out her number, and I grinned and told him I was using my teacher voice.

When I boarded the plane I found there was an empty seat between my window seat and the man sitting in the aisle seat. I asked him, hopefully, if the middle seat had been empty when he’d reserved his seat, and he made a sad face and said no. “Dang,” I said, “Well, maybe it will end up being someone really lovely.”

Our seat partner soon joined us, and we all settled in for our flight. As our plane rolled down the runway, I could see a beautiful sunset blossoming on the horizon. I tried to take a picture, but then our plane turned and… I looked at the young man sitting in the middle seat and said, “The sunset’s amazing, but…”

He smiled in understanding, and finished my sentence for me, “It’s on the wrong side of the plane.”

Soon Eelco and I had introduced ourselves to each other and were in conversation. I learned he’s Dutch – so I, of course, told him my dad’s family had come from de Nederlands, and told him my maiden name was “Molenaar” – which he recognized as totally Dutch. We talked about skiing – he was going to visit a Dutch cousin in Montana to go skiing – and I told him my dad had been, among other things, a ski instructor. Then we talked about traveling – because if you’re a Dutch downhill skier you’re going to need to leave your country to do that. And we talked about languages, jobs, education, family (ahem, I might have mentioned Dad is in Wikipedia for mountaineering), traveling, adventures. I learned he was the same age as my son and we talked about how different the world was when I was born compared to when he and my son were born.

I dozed off for a bit then, and woke to find we were close to landing.

This is when the man on the other side of Eelco told him that I’d been hoping the middle seat would be open. “But,” I added, “I did say that maybe we’d get a lovely person in the middle.” And Brett, the man in the aisle seat, nodded in agreement that I had indeed said that. Now Eelco and Brett got in conversation and learned that they’d both been vendors at the Natural Products Expo West this week! Brett had been there to vend the cardboard containers his company sells; and Eelco had been there to show the glass containers his company sells. They might have even passed each other while they were there!

It is a small world, my friends.

My husband had parked the car and was waiting for me in the baggage claim area. It was so good to see him again! I had all kinds of stories I wanted to share with him about our grandbaby’s hugs, and the people I met on my trip, and the things I saw.

We live in a beautiful world full of new friends just waiting to be met, of laughing toddlers, and people who want to help us on our journeys.

I’m going to hang on to that as I move into the future.

Day One of a Trip to Venice, California

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Scott drops me off at SeaTac. I follow a family with young children – they look like they know what they’re doing. Somehow I end up in front of them in the security check line. I turn around and tell them I was following them because it looked like they knew where to go and they started laughing. No, they tell me, they don’t know what they’re doing. I show them my passport, clutched tightly in my hand, and tell them I’m constantly checking to make sure I have it with me. The mom starts laughing and says she’s checking even as she’s holding it in her hand.

I sit next to a blond woman with a friendly smile, all dressed in pink. My instincts tell me she’ll be fun to chat with. And she is! I learn she’s a manager for Claire’s going to LA for training and we talk about traveling and trips we’ve taken.

I need to stretch my legs and go into the waiting area next to mine. I see an amazing sunrise through the window and go over to take a photo. I apologize to the young man sitting near me for getting in his space and he smiles and says it’s no problem and it is a nice sunrise. I ask him where he’s flying and he says Hawaii. A couple sitting across from him asks me where I’m going and I tell them Los Angeles. “La La Land,” the man says and I tell him I’m going to see my grandbaby. The couple get big smiles and nod their heads in the universal understanding of grandparents for grandparents.

The woman in front of me as we go up the ramp to board the plane starts singing, “I’m leaving on a jet plane…” and I finish for her, “…don’t know when I’ll be back again.” She turns around with a big grin on her face and says, “Exactly!” I follow her and her husband down the aisle and learn they are my seat mates! Cosmic!

As we fly south, we chat and I learn they’re flying to Chile and from there to other places and will be gone for a month. Of course, not long into our conversation I happen to mention my dad is in Wikipedia for mountain climbing and Cathy, who has an app that lets her connect to the internet, looks him up. We talk about weddings and children, trips we’ve taken, and places we’ve lived. When the plane lands I tell her I’m so glad I got her for a seat mate because you never know who you’re going to end up with and she nods and starts laughing.

I wave to the security guard as I head for baggage claim and he smiles and waves back. And there’s my son waiting for me! So good to be with him again!

Christina and little Linh join us at the Gratitude Cafe for lunch. Linh is just waking up from a nap, and it takes a while before she notices me and then she gets a big grin on her face. Oh joy!

Later Christina gives me a tour of Venice Beach. Little Linh is running ahead of us and, literally, runs into a woman with a baby stroller. And this is how we meet Raven and her beautiful little two month-old baby. Her baby, Ariana, was born prematurely – at just 30 weeks- and she’s really tiny – the big pink bow on her head is almost as big as she is. But Raven tells us that she’s more than doubled in size since she was born – she weighed two pounds at birth and now weighs five!

Raven is so fun – animated and full of love – and I ask her if I can take her picture. She laughs and poses for me while I snap my camera.

It’s only day one, and look how many cool new friends I’ve made!

A California Weekend

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Scott and I flew to California last weekend to see our son Andrew, and daughter-in-law Christina, and our little granddaughter, and to visit other relatives who live near to them. It was a wonderful stay in every single way.

But, my friends, going into it, I had a lot of fear about it all. Would I get sick before we left and not be able to fly out? Would I get sick when I was down there and not be able to fly home? Would I lose my hearing aids? Would I lose my contact lens? Would I lose my passport? My cellphone? Would the plane lose a window mid-flight and would I get sucked through it kiester-first and get stuck in it? Would the grandbaby recognize me?

Fears like that.

Fittingly, the Christian Science Bible Lesson sermon for Sunday was “God the Preserver of Man” and was full of verses like these: “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” (Psalms 27). “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works…The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.” (Psalms 145).”The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.” (Psalms 121). “Fear thou not; for I am with thee…” (Isaiah 41).

I leaned into those passages and felt Love wrapping me up in Her arms and giving me a big hug. Love never changes, never ends, never abandons us. Love loves us even when we’re being ridiculous.

The four days of our trip flew by. Here are the highlights…

The Singing Shuttle Bus Driver

Jose, our shuttlebus driver from the parking lot to SeaTac Airport was so cool! He’s from Nicaragua and was singing a song from Ecuador. Jose said we’re all on this planet to help one another, and I said, “We’re all in this together!” He grinned and nodded his head and sang us his songs. What a great way to start the day. Here’s a youtube link to the performance he gave us that morning: https://youtu.be/ujz8FGhDqvI

The Flight Out

The flight out was a little rocky – there were a couple of big bumps that would have sent us flying out of our seats if we hadn’t been buckled in – but everyone was so matter-of-fact about it all. The man across the aisle from me was calmly eating his snacks, and watching a movie on his cellphone as our plane tossed and bucked. I thanked him for that, and he smiled back at me – completely at ease with our wild ride.

When we landed we found our rental car and let Mrs. Google direct us to Andrew and Christina’s place. I hurried ahead of Scott – eager to see our granddaughter. I peeked around the curtain and into the living room, and there she was! She looked up and saw me and her whole face lit up in a grin! She recognized me! Pretty soon she was toddle-running to the door and pretty soon I had her in my arms again. Oh joy! Oh wonder!

Grandbaby Stories –

The Pizza Story: I was reading a book to my granddaughter and there was a picture of a pizza piece in it. We’d just had pizza the night before and Grandbaby had bitten into a jalapeno – which she tried to blow out in the same way you’d blow out a candle. “Pfft pfft.” Now, as she saw the illustration of the piece of pizza, she pointed to it and pointed to her mouth and then said, “Pfft pfft.”

The Keys: As I was reading Good night, Gorilla to the grandbaby, I was describing to her what the gorilla was doing in the illustrations, “The gorilla stole the zookeeper’s keys and now he’s letting ALL the animals out of their cages, and look – they’re following the zookeeper back to his home.” Grandbaby pointed to the keys and pointed to the door and turned her little hand like she was opening the door with the keys. Christina told me that our grandbaby has been trying to open the doors with her keys, but it hasn’t worked out for her – she keeps dropping them. Later I joined Andrew for a walk with Grandbaby, and he let her carry his keys. When we got to the gate, he helped her unlock it. She was so proud and pleased with herself!

The Slide: Christina, and I took Granddaughter to the park. I helped Granddaughter climb up to the top of the slide and helped her get situated so she could slide down to her mum. When she got to the bottom she turned around with a big grin on her face, and pointed to me and then to the slide, letting me know she wanted me to go down the slide now. So I did.

A few hours later I was reading a book to her that included a picture of a slide. Grandbaby pointed to the slide and then pointed to me and then pointed back to the slide. She was reminding me that I had gone down the slide, too!

Ears: I read a story that included a bunny. I pointed to the bunny’s ears, and Marilyn pointed to her own ears, and then pointed to my ears and pointed back to the bunny’s ears again. She got up and toddled over to her mum and pointed to her mum’s ears and then to her grandpa to point to his ears. And pretty son Grandpa Scott was teaching her the “Head and shoulders, knees and toes” song.

Cool Bakeries

Andrew and Christina guided us on a walk to the Larchmont neighborhood where there were all kinds of cool shops and bakeries. We made a stop at Erin McKenna’s vegan bakery for some treats, and Danny, the cashier (and a good sport) posed for us behind her counter.

There was also a great little Mexican bakery, K Bakery, right across the street from our motel where we bought smoothies and little fruit-filled turnovers to begin our day. I loved the atmosphere in there – lively Mexican music playing in the background, and paintings by Mexican artists on the wall, and everyone friendly and helpful.

Visit with Our Niece and Her Family

Scott’s sister’s daughter, Kate, and her husband, Tan, live about half an hour from Andrew and Christina. We took advantage of this by paying them a visit on our second day in California. It was so good to see them again, and to enjoy watching our grandbaby playing with Kate and Tan’s little ones. Both Christina and Tan are of Vietnamese heritage and it seemed perfect for Tan to ordered take-out from a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. The food was great; the fellowship with family was dear; and watching the little ones playing together brought me a heart full of grins. It was a perfect visit.

A Trip to the Beach –

We spent our last night with my cousin, Laurie, and her husband, Roger, and their son, James. I hadn’t seen Laurie since my dad’s hundredth birthday six years ago and it meant so much to me to be able to connect with her again. Her daughter, Allison, came over with her young daughter and it was good to be able to be able to see them again, too, and get caught up on life.

Laurie brought out some old family photos that she inherited from her mom and some of our aunts, and we went looking through them together, talking about our family history, and sharing memories.

Our last day in California, Cousin Laurie drove Scott and I to the coast and I got to dip my finger in the Pacific.

We met these two very cool fishermen at a local marina. I asked Rafael if I could take his photo, and he had no problems with that. I asked him his name and he said Rafael, and then he asked me mine. “Karen, of course,” I said, grinning. He laughed with me about my name – successfully passing my “Karen Test.”

Philip was relaxing in his chair on the other side of the pier, classic rock playing from his e-bike. He’d overheard me introduce myself to Rafael and, smiling, told me I did that “right.” “You gotta have fun with it, right?” I said, laughing.

Philip told us that he once caught the biggest angel shark ever seen in the harbor – he said it was about five and a half feet long and four feet wide! He took a picture of it before it went back into the water. Philip also told us that we could find him on his youtube channel, “Honey Hole Trackers.” (Here’s the link to that: https://www.youtube.com/@HoneyHoleTrackers )

I asked Philip and Rafael if they were old friends, and they said they’d just met that day. I told them I had a feeling this was the beginning of a long friendship.

A Perfect Good Bye

The day before, when I’d said goodbye to my grandbaby before we headed to Laurie’s, Grandbaby had put her little arms around my neck and clung to me and sobbed, and I’d sobbed, too. I didn’t want our last goodbye before we left California to be a repeat of that. I worried about it. And I prayed.

We took a last walk around the block with Andrew and our granddaughter – posing under the golden autumn leaves of the gingko tree across the street, stopping to touch tree bark and wave to dogs going on walks with their humans. When we were done with our walk we went back inside Andrew and Christina’s home and read books. Andrew started beating on the toy tambourine that had been one of my first gifts to the baby, and then Andrew handed me the tambourine and he began to shake a rattle in time to my beats, and we sang and made a song together. Pretty soon Grandbaby started dancing to our song. Her dance was charming and filled my grandma’s heart.

When Scott started putting on his shoes, Grandbaby brought me my shoes to put on, too. Scott and I gathered our things to leave. Grandbaby reached up for a hug, and I asked her to kiss my cheek (I pointed to it), and then kiss my other cheek, too, and she smiled and put her little face next to me. We hugged Christina and Andrew goodbye, and then I transferred Granddaughter to Andrew and he turned her the other direction, and Scott and I slipped out the door. As we left, we looked up at their window, and Grandbaby was at the window with Andrew and Christina waving goodbye to us and smiling. We waved goodbye back and smiled and blew everyone a kiss. It was a sweet, joyful parting. Perfect!

The Flight Home

Our flight home was at night. Mrs. Google led us through Hollywood – we didn’t even realize we were IN Hollywood until we saw the Hollywood Museum sign. That was cool. There was heavy traffic getting to the airport, but once we got there everything went pretty quickly. There was no one in front of us at the TSA screening desk, and we got through all of that smoothly. We chatted to a delightful fellow passenger named Samantha in the waiting area – Samantha was going home to Seattle to be with her family over the holidays. We boarded our flight, buckled ourselves in, and two and half hours later we were back in the rain of Seattle.

Note: I did not lose my passport, my contact lens, or my hearing aids; I did not get sucked out of the plane; and I did not get sick. Love deposited me gently back in my home after a lovely visit with my family. And here we are.

Walking Around in Two Worlds

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part of me is still in Australia
I still smell the fragrance
of the winter flowers
and hear the magpies warbling
their beautiful harmonies
I still feel the weight
of my new granddaughter
in my arms and see her sweet face
looking back at me
and when I look up at the stars
from my backyard in the States
I feel those stars connecting me
to the skies above Australia
I’m living in two worlds now
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

podcast link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/karen-molenaar-terrell/episodes/Walking-Around-in-Two-Worlds-e2folg0

People I’ve Met on Our Trip to Australia

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I’ve met some really lovely people on our trip.

I always hope I’ll be seated by great people on my airplane trips – and I was especially hoping for that on our 13-hour flight to Auckland – and I hit the jackpot with my seat mate! I sat next to a wonderful young man, originally from Punjab, India, but relocated for the last five years to Auckland for work. He helped show me how to play the Solitaire game on the screen in front of my seat; pushed some buttons to see how the “food and drink” tab worked and ended up with cookies and a mocha which he handed off to me; and he used the map on the screen to show me where he grew up in India, and where he lives now in Auckland. He had a great sense of humor and we spent a lot of time laughing together. He helped the flight go faster for me.

Yesterday we went to a Farmers Market near Sydney and – as always at Farmers Markets – we met dogs with wagging tails, and people with smiles on their faces, and the air was filled with laughter and joy and the smell of good things to eat. I bought cookies from two wonderful women at the Gumnut stand who chatted with us about our travels and gave us a little bag of free cookies as a welcome to Australia. We met Maisie, a sweet black Labrador who licked my hand and smiled a doggy smile up at me, and her human, Anna, and her mates – who all laughed with me when I introduced myself as “Karen” and said, “But what are you going to do?”

When we boarded the train after the Farmers Market – and I was looking at a map on the train’s wall and trying to figure out when our next stop was – a very cool chap named Andrew with long dyed hair, shades, and fingernails painted black, came up to the map and showed me where the route would take us. As it turns out, I couldn’t have come upon a better person to help me with this – he actually works for the trains as a guard and was on his way to work on one of the trains when he appeared. Andrew also works as a photographer for musical events – and he and my husband, Scott, got into conversation about lenses and cameras and their experiences as professional photographers.

When we got into Sydney we walked over to the Opera House (of course!) and met all kinds of wonderful people there, too. There were the people who moved over for me so I could take pictures of the seal sunbathing below us. The seal did not appear to be moving and I asked, “Is he alive? He looks so chill.” The people who’d moved over for me smiled and reassured me that the seal was alive and he was just doing what we all should be doing -enjoying the moment. A couple of young men from India asked me if I could take their picture – which I did – and then, later, they reciprocated by taking a picture of me with my family in front of the Opera House – and did an excellent job for me.

Next to the Opera House is a botanic garden. On the way to the garden we saw a bride and groom having their pre-wedding photos taken. On the way back from the garden we came upon the bride and groom again. They looked so radiant and joyful that I felt the urge to capture their joy and share it – so I asked them if I might take their picture. They were happy to smile for my camera. I told the bride that her bouquet was beautiful and she looked at her groom proudly and said that they had made the bouquet together.

After our explorations around the Opera House we went to Karen’s Diner for dinner. My daughter-in-law, Christina, had heard about Karen’s Diner from a friend and had learned that people named “Karen” could be given a free drink there. The theme at Karen’s Diner is that the food is great, and the service is deliberately rude – but rude in a funny way. I loved the whole experience – our servers were great! – and I got a free milk shake out of the deal.

On the train back from Sydney I sat next to a lively, fun family with three youngsters aged five, four, and two. The father was originally from Jamaica, and the mother had lived back and forth between Italy and Australia during her growing-up years – between them they were citizens of three countries! The littlest girl played peek-a-boo with me, and soon Christina and my son, Andrew, who are due to become parents any minute, were chatting with the parents about the joys and challenges of child-rearing. There was a lot of laughter in that conversation.

I am loving Australia and the people who live here.

Cosmic Connections: An Excerpt

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Cosmic Connections: Finding the Joy is available as a paperback now. It should be available as an e-book in a few days. Here’s another excerpt from the book:

I’d Never Been Alone At All!
(Originally published on September 24th, 2019.)

He stood out – literally – he was, like, a foot taller than everyone around him. He had hair the color of copper and an Irish accent.  She stood next to him – coming just below his shoulders – with dark hair and lively eyes and an accent that came from somewhere in the middle of America.  We bonded waiting to get on the airplane – laughing together that we were in the “E” section and would get on last because “they always save the best for last, right?” and “E stands for ‘excellent’, doesn’t it?”

We were bound for Chicago. I mentioned that my husband and I had, just a few weeks before, driven from Seattle to Grand Rapids, Michigan – and had passed by Chicago on our trip. What had taken us five days to achieve then, would take five hours today.  The couple told me then that they lived in Michigan – Kalamazoo, to be exact. I told them I loved the word “Kalamazoo” and the copper-haired man told me that before that he’d lived in another town in Michigan with a native name (maybe Missaukee?). And, he told me, he’d almost taken a job in Australia with a really cool Aboriginal name (maybe Woolgoolga?). I told him he needed to go to Walla Walla next, and he started laughing.

Eventually we boarded the bus that would take us to our plane. There were no seats on the bus and everyone had to find a pole or a bar or a hand-loop to grip during the ride. I was too short to reach the bar above me and all the hand-loops were taken. I was looking around trying to figure out how I was going to keep upright, when the red-haired man saw my dilemma and moved aside so I could grip the loop near him – he was tall enough that he could easily hang onto the bar above us. I’m so grateful to him for that because as the bus worked its way across the tarmac there were a lot of stops and turns and I would have ended up doing a face plant on the floor, for sure, if I hadn’t had something to hold onto.

The bus stopped and we all got out and I quickly found my seat on the plane. Or. I THOUGHT I’d found my seat on the plane until a man tapped me gently on the shoulder and asked me my seat number. I told him and, smiling, he pointed me to a seat a row up and over. “I guess you were wondering where you were going to sit?” I asked, laughing. He laughed, too, and everyone graciously made room for me to move across the aisle. When I got settled I looked up and recognized one of the people who’d been on the bus. She was standing in the aisle next to my seat, waiting to find her own seat. The aisle was kind of clogged up, though, and it looked like it might take a while. Recognizing a person with a sense of humor, I said, “You don’t get a seat. One of those hand loop things is going to drop down from the ceiling and you’ll get to hang on to that for the flight.”  She started cracking up and said that she’d probably get to have the air mask first, though, if those things dropped down.  🙂

The flight was pretty uneventful – there were some air bumps for a while that forced the flight attendants back to their seats – but everyone was really calm about it all, and, in what seemed like no time, our plane had landed at O’Hare.

***

I had a wonderful day in Chicago – seeing old friends and getting inspired by this year’s speaker at the Christian Science association. I came away feeling revitalized and ready to heal the world.

***

But first I had to deal with my own neuroses. I’d worked myself into kind of a tizzy.  When I was younger I’d traveled a lot on my own. But as I’ve gotten older most of my traveling has been with family members and friends. And now I felt like I was all alone, trying to figure things out for myself, and it was scary. My thoughts were going around and around in circles something like this: “I’m going to need to get up at 4:30 to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. How do I set the alarm clock? How do I turn it off? What if I sleep through the alarm? What if the alarm doesn’t go off? What if I miss the shuttle bus and then I miss my plane? And… and… what if I can’t find a kiosk to get my boarding pass? And… what if I mess up at the kiosk and can’t get a boarding pass and miss my plane and get stranded in Chicago for, like, ever? And what if the TSA folks think I look suspicious or something and pull me out of the line and I end up missing my plane and… and… how do I set the alarm clock? How do I turn it off? What if I sleep through the alarm…?

You get the idea. Sheesh.

Of course I didn’t sleep well – tossing and turning, my eyes continually going to the clock. I finally dozed off for a couple hours and came to with a start to find that I’d awakened at exactly 4:24.  I got up and set about getting myself dressed and ready. At 4:30 the alarm went off and I pushed the little button and it stopped – just like that. By 4:45 I was joining other folks in the elevator (I thought I’d be the only one getting up at 4:30!) and heading for the lobby. By 5:00 we were all on the bus and heading for the airport. When the people in front of me got off the shuttle at the United terminal I moved to the front so I could hear our bus driver’s voice – it was really deep and beautiful – a James Earl Jones voice – he sounded like he belonged on the radio. I told him this and he started laughing and said that this was the voice he woke up with and it would get higher as the day went on. “This is your morning voice,” I said, nodding. And he laughed and agreed.

***

(Note: All the employees you’re going to read about who helped me – the lady at the kiosk, the security folks, the vendor who showed me where Starbucks was, and the man who assigned me a seat on the plane – were African Americans. I always feel this kind of weird self-conscious awkwardness about mentioning a person’s race – like it shouldn’t matter, right? – but at the moment I’m feeling the need to share that all the wonderful folks who helped me at O’Hare were Black.)

The Delta terminal was the next stop. I got off there and as soon as I walked in the door found a kiosk waiting for me. A Delta employee immediately joined me at the kiosk to help me get my boarding pass. She asked me for my confirmation number and I showed her the teeny tiny letters on my phone and asked her if she could read them because I couldn’t make them out without my glasses. She laughed and said she needed her glasses, too, and quickly pulled them from a pocket and put them on to read the number to me.  She soon realized it would go faster for us if she just punched the number in herself – so she did that for me. I made some comment about “women of a certain age” helping each other and she started laughing with me in middle-aged sisterhood. Soon she’d printed out my boarding pass for me, found out what gate I needed to go to, and pointed me that direction.

When I got in line for security I expected to have to go through that cubicle where you have to put your arms up and the body scan dealy checks you out. But this time the security people pointed me into a line where I got to by-pass the scanning machine altogether. That was cool.

And so there I was – safe and sound on the other side of security. All the things I’d been so nervous about were now behind me and looked ridiculous to me from this vantage point. I could feel the Cosmos laughing with me.  I imagine the Cosmos finds me pretty entertaining.

Next it was time to find a Starbucks. I stopped at a small vendor of cheeses and fruit and asked her if she could point me to the nearest Starbucks. She looked up at me with a kind of exasperated disbelief and pointed behind her – “Right there,” she said. I saw that the Starbucks was right next to her! Humbled, I said, “Oh, thank you! Sheesh.” A stunning African American woman – she looked like a competent, confident put-together lawyer – happened to be walking by us as this exchange was going on and she looked over at me, a grin on her face, and said, “I heard that.” I laughed with her and told her I was embarrassed, and went to fetch my pumpkin spice latte with whip. Once I had that familiar cup of latte in my hand I went back to the fruit and cheese vendor and bought myself a snack for the plane ride. The vendor graciously thanked me for my business and I thanked her, again, and went to sit in the waiting area.

I had been given a boarding pass without an assigned seat. So when the man appeared behind the podium I went up to him to get a seat. And oh! – he was so fun! I told him I needed a seat – and he grinned and pointed to the row of seats behind him – joking – and then he asked some quick questions, made some snappy small talk as he clicked away on the keyboard – et voila! I had a window seat!

I found a place to sit and, as the waiting area started getting more crowded, I picked up my bags and made room for Mike and Lisa, a middle-aged couple from Indiana. I really enjoyed talking with them. Lisa had arranged an Alaskan cruise for her husband and herself. They were going to visit all the places my husband and I had visited when we went up the Inside Passage seven years ago – Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Sitka – and we talked about all the cool things they were going to see. This was Mike’s first-ever airplane ride. In fact, he told me he’d just had his first-ever train ride, too. In FACT, they’d already taken a car, a bus, and a train to get where they were. “Trains, planes, and automobiles,” I said, and they laughed and said “exactly.”

When it was time to get on the plane I stopped at the podium and made sure to let the man who’d assigned me a seat know how much I’d enjoyed listening to his comedic patter over the microphone as we lined up for boarding. He grinned and thanked me and wished me a good flight.

***

I got my window seat and spent the first half of the flight looking out the window and watching a movie on the screen in front of me. Towards the end of the flight I got into conversation with Eliana, the young woman seated next to me. I’d noticed she was taking an online college course, and shared with her my experience as a high school teacher. We talked about what she’d like to do when she gets out of school – she said she’d like to be a fashion designer – and I could totally picture her doing that. I told her she could name her line of clothes “Eliana” – and that I expected to see her fashion designs out there in a few years.

***

The plane landed a half hour early. I’d left rain in Chicago, and landed in rain in Seattle. There was something very symmetrical and pleasing about that.

As my husband drove me back home, I started thinking about all my ridiculous worries and the fear I’d had of being all on my own, trying to figure things out by myself – and I suddenly realized that I really hadn’t been alone at all! The entire trip I’d had people stepping up to help me out – to give me directions, to make room for me, to laugh with me.

How blessed we are to have each other on Life’s journey!
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

I Hadn’t Been Alone At All!

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He stood out – literally – he was, like, a foot taller than everyone around him. He had hair the color of copper and an Irish accent.  She stood next to him – coming just below his shoulders – with dark hair and lively eyes and an accent that came from somewhere in the middle of America.  We bonded waiting to get on the airplane – laughing together that we were in the “E” section and would get on last because “they always save the best for last, right?” and “E stands for ‘excellent’, doesn’t it?”

We were bound for Chicago. I mentioned that my husband and I had, just a few weeks before, driven from Seattle to Grand Rapids, Michigan – and had passed by Chicago on our trip. What had taken us five days to achieve then, would take five hours today.  The couple told me then that they lived in Michigan – Kalamazoo, to be exact. I told them I loved the word “Kalamazoo” and the copper-haired man told me that before that he’d lived in another town in Michigan with a native name (maybe Missaukee?). And, he told me, he’d almost taken a job in Australia with a really cool Aboriginal name (maybe Woolgoolga?). I told him he needed to go to Walla Walla next, and he started laughing.

Eventually we boarded the bus that would take us to our plane. There were no seats on the bus and everyone had to find a pole or a bar or a hand-loop to grip during the ride. I was too short to reach the bar above me and all the hand-loops were taken. I was looking around trying to figure out how I was going to keep upright, when the red-haired man saw my dilemma and moved aside so I could grip the loop near him – he was tall enough that he could easily hang onto the bar above us. I’m so grateful to him for that because as the bus worked its way across the tarmac there were a lot of stops and turns and I would have ended up doing a face plant on the floor, for sure, if I hadn’t had something to hold onto.

The bus stopped and we all got out and I quickly found my seat on the plane. Or. I THOUGHT I’d found my seat on the plane until a man tapped me gently on the shoulder and asked me my seat number. I told him and, smiling, he pointed me to a seat a row up and over. “I guess you were wondering where you were going to sit?” I asked, laughing. He laughed, too, and everyone graciously made room for me to move across the aisle. When I got settled I looked up and recognized one of the people who’d been on the bus. She was standing in the aisle next to my seat, waiting to find her own seat. The aisle was kind of clogged up, though, and it looked like it might take a while. Recognizing a person with a sense of humor, I said, “You don’t get a seat. One of those hand loop things is going to drop down from the ceiling and you’ll get to hang on to that for the flight.”  She started cracking up and said that she’d probably get to have the air mask first, though, if those things dropped down.  🙂

The flight was pretty uneventful – there were some air bumps for a while that forced the flight attendants back to their seats – but everyone was really calm about it all, and, in what seemed like no time, our plane had landed at O’Hare.

***

I had a wonderful day in Chicago – seeing old friends and getting inspired by this year’s speaker at the Christian Science association. I came away feeling revitalized and ready to heal the world.

***

But first I had to deal with my own neuroses. I’d worked myself into kind of a tizzy.  When I was younger I’d traveled a lot on my own. But as I’ve gotten older most of my traveling has been with family members and friends. And now I felt like I was all alone, trying to figure things out for myself, and it was scary. My thoughts were going around and around in circles something like this: “I’m going to need to get up at 4:30 to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. How do I set the alarm clock? How do I turn it off? What if I sleep through the alarm? What if the alarm doesn’t go off? What if I miss the shuttle bus and then I miss my plane? And… and… what if I can’t find a kiosk to get my boarding pass? And… what if I mess up at the kiosk and can’t get a boarding pass and miss my plane and get stranded in Chicago for, like, ever? And what if the TSA folks think I look suspicious or something and pull me out of the line and I end up missing my plane and… and… how do I set the alarm clock? How do I turn it off? What if I sleep through the alarm…?

You get the idea. Sheesh.

Of course I didn’t sleep well – tossing and turning, my eyes continually going to the clock. I finally dozed off for a couple hours and came to with a start to find that I’d awakened at exactly 4:24.  I got up and set about getting myself dressed and ready. At 4:30 the alarm went off and I pushed the little button and it stopped – just like that. By 4:45 I was joining other folks in the elevator (I thought I’d be the only one getting up at 4:30!) and heading for the lobby. By 5:00 we were all on the bus and heading for the airport. When the people in front of me got off the shuttle at the United terminal I moved to the front so I could hear our bus driver’s voice – it was really deep and beautiful – a James Earl Jones voice – he sounded like he belonged on the radio. I told him this and he started laughing and said that this was the voice he woke up with and it would get higher as the day went on. “This is your morning voice,” I said, nodding. And he laughed and agreed.

***

(Note: All the employees you’re going to read about who helped me – the lady at the kiosk, the security folks, the vendor who showed me where Starbucks was, and the man who assigned me a seat on the plane, were African-Americans. I always feel this kind of weird self-conscious awkwardness about mentioning a person’s race – like it shouldn’t matter, right? – but at the moment I’m feeling the need to share that all the wonderful folks who helped me at O’Hare were African-Americans.)

The Delta terminal was the next stop. I got off there and as soon as I walked in the door found a kiosk waiting for me. A Delta employee immediately joined me at the kiosk to help me get my boarding pass. She asked me for my confirmation number and I showed her the teeny tiny letters on my phone and asked her if she could read them because I couldn’t make them out without my glasses. She laughed and said she needed her glasses, too, and quickly pulled them from a pocket and put them on to read the number to me.  She soon realized it would go faster for us if she just punched the number in herself – so she did that for me. I made some comment about “women of a certain age” helping each other and she started laughing with me in middle-aged sisterhood. Soon she’d printed out my boarding pass for me, found out what gate I needed to go to, and pointed me that direction.

When I got in line for security I expected to have to go through that cubicle where you have to put your arms up and the body scan dealy checks you out. But this time the security people pointed me into a line where I got to by-pass the scanning machine altogether. That was cool.

And so there I was – safe and sound on the other side of security. All the things I’d been so nervous about were now behind me and looked ridiculous to me from this vantage point. I could feel the Cosmos laughing with me.  I imagine the Cosmos finds me pretty entertaining.

Next it was time to find a Starbucks. I stopped at a small vendor of cheeses and fruit and asked her if she could point me to the nearest Starbucks. She looked up at me with a kind of exasperated disbelief and pointed behind her – “Right there,” she said. I saw that the Starbucks was right next to her! Humbled, I said, “Oh, thank you! Sheesh.” A stunning African-American woman – she looked like a competent, confident put-together lawyer – happened to be walking by us as this exchange was going on and she looked over at me, a grin on her face, and said, “I heard that.” I laughed with her and told her I was embarrassed, and went to fetch my pumpkin spice latte with whip. Once I had that familiar cup of latte in my hand I went back to the fruit and cheese vendor and bought myself a snack for the plane ride. The vendor graciously thanked me for my business and I thanked her, again, and went to sit in the waiting area.

I had been given a boarding pass without an assigned seat. So when the man appeared behind the podium I went up to him to get a seat. And oh! – he was so fun! I told him I needed a seat – and he grinned and pointed to the row of seats behind him – joking – and then he asked some quick questions, made some snappy small talk as he clicked away on the keyboard – et voila! I had a window seat!

I found a place to sit and, as the waiting area started getting more crowded, I picked up my bags and made room for Mike and Lisa, a middle-aged couple from Indiana. I really enjoyed talking with them. Lisa had arranged an Alaskan cruise for her husband and herself. They were going to visit all the places my husband and I had visited when we went up the Inside Passage seven years ago – Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Sitka – and we talked about all the cool things they were going to see. This was Mike’s first-ever airplane ride. In fact, he told me he’d just had his first-ever train ride, too. In FACT, they’d already taken a car, a bus, and a train to get where they were. “Trains, planes, and automobiles,” I said, and they laughed and said “exactly.”

When it was time to get on the plane I stopped at the podium and made sure to let the man who’d assigned me a seat know how much I’d enjoyed listening to his comedic patter over the microphone as we lined up for boarding. He grinned and thanked me and wished me a good flight.

***

I got my window seat and spent the first half of the flight looking out the window and watching a movie on the screen in front of me. Towards the end of the flight I got into conversation with Eliana, the young woman seated next to me. I’d noticed she was taking an online college course, and shared with her my experience as a high school teacher. We talked about what she’d like to do when she gets out of school – she said she’d like to be a fashion designer – and I could totally picture her doing that. I told her she could name her line of clothes “Eliana” – and that I expected to see her fashion designs out there in a few years.

***

The plane landed a half hour early. I’d left rain in Chicago, and landed in rain in Seattle. There was something very symmetrical and pleasing about that.

As my husband drove me back home, I started thinking about all my ridiculous worries and the fear I’d had of being all on my own, trying to figure things out by myself – and I suddenly realized that I really hadn’t been alone at all! The entire trip I’d had people stepping up to help me out – to give me directions, to make room for me, to laugh with me.

How blessed we are to have each other on Life’s journey!

Chicago O’Hare’s Airport
Sea-Tac Airport

 

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