Stranger on a Plane

Today I flew back from a conference in Austin and I sat next to the nicest lady on the leg from Houston to Tulsa. She was eighty years old and still very pretty. She had lively blue eyes and her nails had been done professionally. I found out she has seven grandchildren and thirteen great grandchildren and “every one of them is spoiled by their MeMaw.” I shared with her that I’m not a grandma yet but I definitely plan on spoiling any future grandchildren because “that’s the only way we know how to do it in our family.” This sweet lady, whose name I never learned, lives in Pittsburg, Kansas with her husband and most of her extended family. Her husband was driving from Pittsburg to Tulsa to pick her up at the airport and she had joked to him that maybe he should bring a dogsled because of the snow in Tulsa. In the best of road conditions, Pittsburg is a two-hour drive from Tulsa. When I asked her what brought her to Houston, she told me that she flies down several times a year for a few days to take care of Mary, her fifty-seven year old daughter-in-law who has MS. Mary’s own mother usually does the bulk of the care-giving but my traveling companion goes to give her a break. I shared that my husband has MS but his is the kind that is Relapsing-Remitting and he gets around quite well with a cane. Mary, however, has the severe Progressive kind that has relegated her to living in a wheelchair and not being able to speak or care for herself. My heart goes out to Mary but I have a special appreciation for her mother and her mother-in-law, both elderly ladies, who should be sitting back having their grandchildren wait on them hand and foot but instead they’re still caregivers and they take it in stride because “that’s what you do until you’re not able to do it anymore.” Meanwhile, back home in Oklahoma, people were saying hurtful things to one another over a football game. Perspective can be a gift from a stranger on a plane. And that’s what I really think.