Flying Solo

Flying Solo

On a recent full flight from San Diego to Houston, I chose the first-row window seat. Nodding at the businessman on my left as I took my seat, I waited to see who’d be buckling in beside me.

I didn’t have to wait long.

A flight attendant leaned in and asked if she could seat an unaccompanied minor between my row mate and me. We both agreed, and a six-year-old boy with a Batman backpack and a rolled-up blue blanket plopped down. The flight attendant asked if he needed anything from the backpack before she stowed it overhead for takeoff, promising to retrieve it for him when we were at cruising altitude.

Myles was going to Texas to see his dad, he said. This wasn’t his first time to fly, either, just his first time by himself. (But he wasn’t scared.) Within moments of taking off, he began to fall asleep, clutching the blue blanket in his lap. Myles slept through beverage service and the captain’s release of the seat belt sign. But when he woke up, he was ready to roll.

The attendant got him his backpack, and he pulled out a bottle with his name on it and a freezer bag so full of snacks I wondered what his mother had been thinking. Myles opened the bag and ate (in hurried order) a bag of cookies, a package of crackers, two packets of Starburst candies, and several bags of Goldfish crackers. With every item he opened, Myles asked, “Would you like some?” I declined as I looked around for the airsickness bag.

Myles was cute, confident, talkative, and self-aware. All was well with him, until we began to descend for landing. Then his ears began to pop and his head hurt. He wasn’t brave anymore. He was scared and confused and began to cry. Myles’s hurt was temporary (sucking a hard candy helped), and his father was the first person I saw waiting at the end of the Jetway.

I smiled and waved at them both, then thought, One day my own mix of bravado and panic will be forgotten, and I will place my hand in the hand of the one who has both traveled every mile with me and waited for me to arrive at home. None of us fly solo.

You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.

Psalm 139:5, NASB