Isaac - a story about last weeks IROP

ISAAC, a Little Family and a Four Hour Delay
Heather McKeown-Inflight
Tampa to JFK
    Repeating one of my favorite truisms, let me just say this: Delays are what you make them!  Take for instance this one particular set of passengers that waited four or five hours in an airport while Air Traffic Control regrouped after thunderstorms forced JFK to shut down.  When New York’s busiest airport closes I call it our own little ‘shot heard around the world’.  The ripple effect of a no landings/no take offs order is instantaneous.  If there are two hundred planes headed to Kennedy when the shut down is in effect, where do you think they’re supposed to go?  Diversions to another city or flying in circles until the airport reopens are possible plans for those already up and aiming at JFK.  For those ready to take off from any other point, well, these planes won’t be given a ‘wheels up’ time* until the already airborne,  inbound traffic is taken care of.
 
   At first I saw just the sweetest little girl wearing  tiny yellow crocs for shoes, no socks  and clean little dress and just the cutest little face.  With a couple of bottom teeth visible, a smart and cheery smile was a constant.   I got down on my knees and she was just so engaging.  Her dad, a very handsome, casually dressed young man, let me know with a lot of pride and awe, that the little girl was his daughter.

 “She can really tear around!  She just goes, goes, goes.”  he laughed. We chatted a bit about his child, but that’s about all.  I left them as they chased one another around the departure lounge because there were so many other others waiting around for updates about this very long delay.

       I stopped at a little girl, black hair in a few little pony tails with big, red-balled elastics holding each to the scalp.   She was about five and very shy.  “Do you sing?” I asked.  A nod.   What’s your favorite song?”

“Twinkle twinkle little star.”

“I know that one.  Will you sing it with me?”  but to this inquiry, she demurred and I heard, “She’s shy.  This one sings!”  And a boy, three or four years old came up to me.  He was the little brother of the shy girl.  His mother gave out a big chuckle and tossed her head from side to side and the father leaned forward, relaxed forearms on his thighs and beamed, “Oh he sings, alright.”

       Well, that tiny child didn’t stand much higher than my knees but he was huge in his actions.  He stepped out of the little grouping told me, “I SING!” and I thought, ‘This isn’t going to be any Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, this fellow’s going to belt something out!

“What’s your name?”  I asked.

“Isaac!”

“What will you sing today?”

“Do you like Michael Jackson?” he asked with enthusiasm.

“I love him and I believe he was innocent of all charges.”

       His family, in that wonderful motion that only African American congregations can muster, agreed with me on that verdict.  “Amen to that.”  “You got that right.”  Nods all around.  It was quite a large group, or maybe it was because their attitude and energies were huge, but the impression was of one big happy clan.   I was vacuumed into their zone and prepared myself to enjoy Michael Jackson’s Mini-Me.

       He stepped into an open space an into character.  This tiny boy became the one and only The King of Pop right before an audience of curious, delayed folks that had also been drawn in to his confident atmosphere.  The posturing, the hand motions, the voice, the twirling and moon walking  master of his Universe had me at “I can sing”,  but when he started his rendition of BILLY JEAN.  There was a smattering of clapping and I was the loudest.

       He finished the song but said, “I need a HAT!”  Someone from his family immediately shot out an arm with said article and he grabbed it, put it on at that ‘hide-half-my-face-Michael-Jackson-angle’ and once again, BILLY JEAN was performed perfectly.  The hat did make a difference.  It was even used as the prop popularized by the late star.  At the end of the second round, that hat was pushed from the top of his head  to that face-hiding position as the boy’s body struck that famous end-of-performance pose.  I was transfixed and the applause this time came from a wider area and I heard a couple of whistles and someone yelled, “Encore!”  It would have been me, but someone beat me to it.

       Again, this time for a very large and captivated audience, BILLY JEAN was his girl.  Lucky girl. Lucky crowd.

       The only way anyone can follow an act like Isaac’s is to sit down in the nearest empty seat and have a quiet conversation with another family.  I found the little yellow croc shoe girl’s unit and met her mommy and an aunt.  We chatted about this and that until the real reason for their trip to Florida the first place was revealed.   The trip down from New York  was to visit a sick relative.  Really sick.  “She’s my mothah.” said the young father.  “She’s in hospice now and we just left hah.  It’s cansah and it’s bad.  She didn’t want us to stay longah but what can ya’ do?  We’re going home now, but can come back again, but we didn’t wanna’ leave this time. Ya know?”  Hospice can encompass a very brief time but it can also be a few  weeks or longer.  The individual sometimes forces the will to live to override the estimated time of departure dictated by the doctors.  I’ve witnessed this myself.

       My mother, a very lapsed Methodist,  had kidney disease.  The Anglican minister and the Bishop went to her hospital room to give her the last rites when I was eleven (1963).  Instead, she was asked, “Would you like to be confirmed into the Anglican church?”  Wow, they never give up, eh?  Well, Mom was said to have agreed so the deed was done, a white prayer book given as the bonus prize and Mom lived until I was seventeen (1970).   There’s a lot to be said for religion, I guess, but Mom told me that she’d never leave until she was sure my brother and I would be ok, so I think her cast iron determination was equally in play.   At seventeen, I just assumed I was totally ok, ready to be a grown up and had ‘arrived’ just because my Mom died.  She was a medical miracle.  A conundrum.  A MOTHER.  They don’t leave until they think their young can handle life without them.  Well, mine didn’t, at any rate.

       The delay was very long.  Four hours and then, once boarded, JFK closed again and we were all together on an airplane for two hours.  The folks were allowed off with their boarding passes and personal belongings, but those who stayed aboard were well fed, watered and kept abreast of the avionic situation for that entire time.   Our captain was always updating the listening audience and great communication is a Jetblue trait that pays dividends with the traveling public, especially when they’re being held hostage during long delays.  It was a fun time, actually.

       Just before we closed up for the flight, the young man, who’d been visiting his dying mother,  got a call on his cell. He looked up at me from his front row seat, eyes enormous, face pinched, “I just talked to my uncle.  He says she’s unresponsive.”  He couldn’t compute this fact and the disbelief registering on his face gave him the countenance of a little boy being told that Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy weren’t real.  It was too much information for this son.    His wife, baby on her lap, and his sister were seated across the aisle and heard him.  They all looked up at me with pleading in their eyes.  They were thinking, “Should we get off this plane and go to the hospital to see Ma?”  This was what they were thinking and I could tell that the strength they were employing was absolutely super-human.  The mother had insisted they return to New York, after all.

“She wanted us to take this flight.  She was weak but I sorta’ thought that I could come back, ya’ know?  Like I could come back soon and....”  his voice trailed off and his eyes were veiled in self-doubt.  “She told us to take this flight back to New Yawk.  It’s like she didn’t want us there any more, ya’ know?”

       My little family of the yellow croc shoed child sat on both sides of the plane in the front row.  The babe slept almost the entire way so the adults were forced to think about the bed ridden mom they loved so very much.  The tiny little lady who had told them to take the flight back to New York.

       The trip was uneventful.   Everyone, including the crew, was very tired.  I’d only had four hours sleep between trips because of the delays of the previous night.  Eight hours between one landing and the next report-for-duty time is what we must endure during these irregular operations, but I can’t use all that time for sleep.  I have to mellow out, shower, wash my uniform in a hotel sink and read a bit before slumber hits me.   My legs were really swollen and I was a hurting unit, but there’s always someone hurting more than a body, isn’t there?  There sure was that night on that flight.  I lost my mom forty-one years before and I’m still healing.   It was really hard to see her live in pain just for my brother and me, but this little family was living this in real time and it was all so fresh and agonizing for them.  Final good-byes, even when expected, are a terrible shock but they didn’t want to admit that they may have bid the sick lady a final ‘Adieu’.  Very few of us can say ‘Good-bye’, for that last time,  on cue.

       We finally landed.  “You’re now welcome to use your cell phone if it’s readily accessible.”  The young father did so.  Looking at me and at nobody, he exclaimed, “She passed!”  There were tears in that row, lots of tears, but they were a very strong threesome as they deplaned with that beautiful little, now barefoot, girl.  We all hugged and words are not enough at such times.

       Out on the jetbridge, as they awaited the delivery of their checked-in-the-belly-of-the-plane stroller, the young man, cell phone to his ear,  called to me, “What time did we take off?”

“6:09"

“My mothah died at 6:11.  She wanted us to leave Florida before she’d let go.”

       If that newly passed mother could see her young ones through my eyes, she’d be smiling and nodding, “You’re fine.  You’ll be ok now and so will I because I know you’ll be fine without me.”


       Yes.  Mothers wait.  Mothers die.  Sons and daughters mourn.  Grandchildren grow up hearing all the stories about their Granny’s.
       Yet, Isaac is carrying on for Michael Jackson, keeping him alive in actions and music.  That little girl in the yellow crocs and pretty dress may just have her granny’s smile and, I hope, for many, many decades, she goes, goes, goes.

That’s life.  Delays, take offs, landings. That’s life.






*wheels up time-the time awarded to departing aircraft for ‘rotation’ or take off.  i.e.  “We have a wheels up time of 1800 hours (6:00 PM).  It’s one o’clock now, so let’s not board the customers just yet.” (Ya’ THINK?)


Thanks Heather.....