Life-sampling ...

I traveled to Iowa this summer, for a family reunion. Families often set some time aside for “catching up” on biographies—being saturated with each others' stories, and curious about them, and invested in how they develop, is an essential part of the human family dynamic. But in the course of daily life—especially when you're crossing state lines and wandering through airports—one can't help incidentally sampling others' lives as well. These following moments from my four-day journey, where I brushed by a sample of someone else's story, were particularly memorable:

{from life-sample #4: Descending into Atlanta...}

INT: AIRPLANE - DESCENDING INTO MOLINE, IL (5 August 2015)

Stewardess comes down the aisle to secure the airplane cabin for landing. A lanky young man is wearing black clothes and listening intently to his headphones with a hip blend of pensiveness, aloofness. He has not yet acknowledged the illuminated 'FASTEN SEAT BELTS' sign.

Stewardess:

“Sir, I', going to need you to put your seat belt on for me.”

Man nods.

Stewardess:

“Thank you.”

The belt is only half-tightened; it sags off to the side in a manner that would likely leave the man whipping around like a tether-ball if the plane lost its stability.

The man tugs on the belt and notices this. He looks for the adjusting-strap. He finds it, and promptly loosens the belt all the way.

He then slides across to the vacant window-seat beside him to watch our plane's descent through the windy sky.

*

INT: HAMPTON INN – MOLINE, IL (6 August 2015)

A man and woman sit together at one of a dozen small tables adjacent to the inn's complimentary breakfast nook. The woman has just returned from the hot-trays, where a row of identical half-moon omelets were stacked at the ready, on their sides, about 8-deep.

She cuts into her omelet and takes a bite. She chews thoughtfully.

Woman:

“It's good.”

Man looks out past the far edge of his bagel to meet her gaze.

Woman:

“I don't know if it's real, but—”

*

INT: SMALL RESTAURANT NEAR AUGUSTANA COLLEGE – ROCK ISLAND, IL (6 August 2015)

While the restaurant's three current patrons (including myself) eat their sandwiches in the enclosed porch alcove, the waitress joins two other female workers as they sit beside a table cooling off from the afternoon heat.

Waitress:

“I'm having grandpa watch my girl today. She's scared to death of her grandpa—anything he does. He's terrifying. She's at that age, you know. Stranger-danger.”

*

AIRPLANE CABIN – DESCENDING INTO ATLANTA, GA

(8 August 2015)

{This final scene it too rich to be told concisely in screenplay format; enjoy the narrative:}

A mother sits in aisle seat beside me, balancing her toddler son on her lap, with her youngest daughter by the window and her husband and older daughter in the seats behind her. For 40 minutes, she has been feeding them all from a bag of Dum-Dums and a pack of Red Vines "To help with the altitude," sticking spent sucker sticks and wrappers in the seat pockets.

As the plane prepares for descent, her son is clearly sugar crashing: kicking the seat in front of him, making it shake like a 25-cent storefront ride, and wailing inconsolably--deaf to her incessant baby-talk, and even to the stern bursts of "Stop it! Stop it NOW; that HURTS mommy!!" that darkly tinge her ebullience.

Somewhere around minute 3 of this explosion, it becomes plain that she suffers from air sickness, and the rapid descent is destabilizing her sugar-filled stomach. "Don't push on mommy's tummy!" The little girl turns away from this drama, toward the window, and pulls down the shade to watch the rushing clouds and twirling ground below: "Look! I can see--" "Close that window now!" snaps the mother, now pressing her head into the chair and breathing deeply to settle her roiling guts. "Bllaaa-Moooommmmyy, bllaaa, bll-ggh," the little boy has been crying so long he is now choking on his own saliva, and sounds like HE will be the first to lose it.

"Honey, give me a puke-bag," she says to her husband, and he calmly obliges (he seems quite well-prepared to this drama), but the boy pushes it away, kicking again and bouncing on her stomach, to which he is woefully strapped and buckled. She then hold the bag to her own face, and breaths to the side, in my direction, a few times, a few times deeper, and then "Blerggghh" the bag begins to fill with the unmistakable neon glow of many, many liquified candies.

For a moment, this seems to distract the boy from his tantrum--but only for a moment So as she hands her husband that first weighted bag and begins to fill a second one, the boy resumes his crying as the jet careens--far too slowly, it now seems--toward the runway.

We land. "Now do you see why mommy doesn't fly that often?" She jests to her daughters. The family laughs as they load up a trash bag with their various plastic and biological waste. I collect my hat and bag. The man beside me pulls his homemade burrito from his seat pouch and stores it in his carry-on. "I bet you're glad you didn't eat that during the fight," I say to him. He laughs, "Yes, I'm very, very glad."