Coming home from NYC, my window seat- mate was a musician. Eric had missed his flight heading to San Lucia a few days earlier due to weather, was bussed an hour and a half to another airport to catch a different connecting flight, played a weekend jazz festival on the island, and like the rest of flight 168 got stuck on the ground at JFK in NYC while Jet Blue awaited another plane which was delayed on account of weather. Our departure time of 8:58 Saturday night was moved to 10:20 due to rain and slick runways. Eric was plumb tuckered and slept the whole way back to Oakland.
My amazing husband had the aisle seat. He did not close his eyes on either flight - coming or going. Watching Saturday Night Live on his little screen imbedded in the back of our daughter’s seat just in front of him, he laughed out loud several times. When I heard him, I looked over from my middle seat and he’d explain the funny bit very loudly on account of not being able to hear how loudly he was speaking because he still had the TV noise coming into his ears.
In my middle seat, I kept knitting. Middle of the airplane, middle of the sky, middle of the night, I did middle seat airplane yoga. With knitting. This is the second hat I’ve attempted with what are called circular needles. Hand work of any kind is a lulling, meditative craft for me.
Lucky grandie and her mama, our daughter, had a no-show in their window seat, so the eight-year-old got to stretch out and she slept at least four hours of the six hour flight home.
Lucky me to have seen a life-hack trick in Westways Magazine involving beach balls. My beloved, of course had three. With three pillow slips packed in my carry-on, we three females inflated our balls to the desired poofiness which enabled us to sleep a wee bit by putting our heads down on the tray tables covered by bouncy buoyancy or, in the granddaughter's case, on the empty seat.
Exhausted musician Eric slept through three rounds of turbulence and all the water and snack-attacks from the overworked stewards. I nabbed him one water and stuck it in his seat pocket for which he was grateful on awakening 2:00 a.m. just before we landed in Oakland.
On the red-eye to NYC Thursday night, I was able to meditate a wee bit and sleep some. Mercifully, we got a couple hours sleep in the hotel room before the festivities began for our grand niece's bat mitzvah late Friday afternoon. The whole affair was held at an upscale nightclub on Tenth Avenue on the Upper Westside.
While the ceremony was lovely, and our niece even lovelier, memories of the after party make my ears hurt all over again on account of the decibel level, so I won't go there... other than to say, I never thought I'd see scantily clad women serving drinks to children while hanging upside down in full splits from the ceiling with the entire venue shaking in time to the thrum of the bass, all the while, the screeching of the DJ was encouraging the children to yell even more loudly. When he hollered, LET ME HEAR YOU, I held my ears tightly and thought, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING.
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What I love about middle seat airplane yoga is how sneaky it is. All I need to do is arrange my limbs, bend forward and breathe while the angles of my legs reach into the tight parts of my spine and release the tension there. No one knows I'm doing yoga!
Knitting becomes meditation on account of adding mantra to every stitch. So! Check off having done my spiritual practices even while in transit between coasts. Ah, the portability of intention and practice. Accountability to self... on account of I hate to miss my commitment to keep up the practices.
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