No one wants to hear about anyone else’s dream but last night I fell in love with a man with cerebral palsy. The more surprising thing was that he was barely twenty, and built like a lamp post. His mouth twisted when he spoke and he said funny things and pulled me onto his lap.
I woke up next to an international marketing saleswoman. Orthotic insoles. We were on a plane, flying from San Francisco to Sydney. She was going to Australia for ten days of meetings and also no one wants to hear about the person you sat next to on a plane.
I thought I would have moved back to the U.S. by now but this was just a visit. The saleswoman would be staying in Sydney and I would continue onto Perth. My husband was already there and had asked me what I wanted from the grocery store. Summer fruit, I had texted. Nectarines, peaches, something juicy.
Look, I said to the saleswoman, pointing at the window. She was reading a book called either A Whole New Mind, or Right Brain Rising. Both of these phrases were at the tops of the pages and I couldn’t recall if the title went on the left and the chapter on the right, or vice versa. Look at the sun, I said.
Generally I am not a talker on planes, but occasionally feel the need to point out the fact that we are in the sky and the clouds look like waves or the black specks could be mountains. Sometimes I add something about being in a flying machine built by humans, using words like majestic and illusion.
The sun was bright and round, and, through the shaded window, a veiny violet hue. The sky was dark and the clouds were lavender, a vampire’s bubble bath. Wow, she said, craning her neck, her long French manicured nails resting across the pages of her book. She looked like my brother’s mother-in-law but why would I say that to her.
My children were across the aisle. I tapped one of them with my foot. Look out the window, I said. My daughter put down the iPad because she knows that when her mother becomes a docent, it is easier to look at the thing than make a fuss. She said it looked like a book cover but couldn’t remember which one.
I have done this trip many times now, from one end of the world to the other. I have departed at midnight and landed the same day, hours earlier. Flying west, over the Pacific Ocean, I miss a day. I wish I remembered all the days I have missed. It feels wrong to overlook them, like forgetting the death of an acquaintance. On this trip, somewhere in the middle of the Emma Stone tennis movie, I breezed through the fifteenth of January.
The saleswoman asked me about the movie and I asked her about her book. She said it was called A Whole New Mind and I tried to look surprised, like I hadn’t peeked earlier. She said she likes self-help stuff and tugged lightly on her beige turtleneck sweater. I like to read them during big life changes, she said, clearing her throat. I nodded, and resisted the urge to squeeze her arm.
I shared the first self-helpy thing that came to mind, which is the expression, everything you want in life is on the other side of fear. She said she hoped to remember that, so I ripped out a page of my journal and wrote it down for her. Sorry, I shrugged. I don’t know if I have it right, or who said it. It doesn’t matter, she said. It’s so true.
We looked out the window again, at the big purple sun. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I was thinking about how we’re in a flying machine built by humans.