Hot but calm afternoon, clear sky; no signs of potential torrential rain, no canceled flights. As customary, when one is part of my family, I was running on a tight schedule. My mom was making dinner and hoped I’d eat before I left the house. “I won’t have time,” I said. But, in anticipation of the pitfalls of traveling, I fixed myself a quick bite so that I wouldn’t starve.
My friend picked me up and we drove off. Although we were making good time, I’m always terrified of long checkpoint lines. At that moment, I wished I had left at least half an hour earlier or that the flight was departing a little later for my anxiety’s sake. That’s when I got a text message stating that my flight was delayed. Be careful what you wish for, I thought.
We were about to enter airport territory — within two mile radius maybe — when I got the message. Any closer and we would’ve had to do a big loop-around just to go back. Luckily, my friend is a fast thinker when it comes to troublemaking. “Let’s take this next exit and grab a drink!” she said. It was happy hour. Her idea of killing time was perfect.
Before we could even exit the highway, I got another text. My flight, which had just been delayed an hour, was being delayed another extra forty minutes. My friend was delighted, but I was starting to feel a bit edgy.
I thought a drink of tequila would help, but it didn’t; a second one sort of did.
After a short walk around the block, still under clear skies, my friend and I headed back to the airport. “They’re not even explaining why it’s being delayed,” I said.
“It might be the bad weather,” my friend said. As far as I saw, it was too nice in Philadelphia for rain and it never occurred to me to check the weather for Miami either, my destination, not even after she said that.
Once inside the airport, I relaxed when I saw that the checkpoint line was almost clear. But after we boarded the plane, we got a PA announcement: more delays. And it kept happening every 30 minutes or so.
The flight was originally scheduled for 5:00pm, but I, along with a bunch of strangers (still in a pandemic) sat on the plane for four hours — four. hours.
I didn’t even notice that it was raining until a flight attendant pointed it out. I sat there looking out the window, watching the heavy rain come down, and that’s when I finally thought about checking the weather. It appeared that both cities were victims of Mother Nature. I sat back, lost in thought, and just watched the pouring rain again, which incidentally looks distorted out of an airplane window.
To my surprise, though it wasn’t under the airline’s control, everybody was calm, myself included. In fact, it was the calmest group of travelers I’ve ever been around in a non-moving plane that was being delayed for five hours. You’d think we were all sedated. Well, I can only speak for myself here...
I just couldn’t believe my patience that day, given the circumstances. I chose to watch movies instead, listen to music, send an occasional tweet, chuckle at the memes my friend sent me…and I was proud of it. Even when my back started to bother me I stayed strong. Have I finally reached that point in adulthood? I said to myself, or was it the soothing effect of the rain? I liked it either way.
The flight took off around 10:00pm. No turbulence in the air, no crying kids, no issues. The calm after the storm. And when we landed, I was hoping we’d take a little longer to exit the plane because I didn’t finish the second movie I was watching. Ha ha! It was for the best that it didn’t take long, though.
It was an exhausting trip in the end, but one that taught me something about me: my self-control is much better than I thought! You can only hang on in situations you have no control over. By the way, I slept like a baby that night.
