Maybe hell is too strong a word, I told myself, but after the last update (“We don’t know if the plane will go out, and if not, there are no flights available until Monday”), hell it is. My student and new friend Kelly and I have been at the airport for over eight hours. First, weather delays, and now a mechanical issue. Everything is up in the air but us.
Sometimes it’s exceedingly hard to find some edge of calm in the center of who-knows-what-will-happen-and-when? “So we might be here until 2 a.m. to see if the plane is good to go?” a woman asks the Continental representation. “Well, surely, we’ll know something before then,” she responds, but the best-case scenario for all of us on this flight who have connections is that we’re going to spend the night in Newark. Not-so-best case is that we’ll be in Vermont for a long, snowy weekend or figuring out crazy quilt arrangements of planes, trains and automobiles.
Meanwhile, I tell myself that I’m healthy, warm, and not so hungry now that I’ve eaten a stale bagel. The airport is pleasant enough, the company is good, and the padded seat is relatively comfortable. So what to do? Not much, but wait, let go of any specific plans, and hope a hotel bed near the Newark airport is in my near future. Most all, I lean my hope toward safely arriving, eventually, back home.
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