Beth Bornstein Dunnington
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A Circle Of Women

February 2, 2018

Something extraordinary at LAX today… (writing this on the plane). I was at the gate, waiting to get on my plane to Portland. Flights to two different cities were boarding on either side of the Portland fight. A toddler who looked to be eighteen or so months old was having a total meltdown, running between the seats, kicking and screaming, then lying on the ground, refusing to board the plane (which was not going to Portland). His young mom, who was clearly pregnant and traveling alone with her son, became completely overwhelmed… she couldn’t pick him up because he was so upset, he kept running away from her, then lying down on the ground, kicking and screaming again. The mother finally sat down on the floor and put her head in her hands, with her kid next to her still having a meltdown, and started crying.

Then, this gorgeous thing (I’m crying just writing this)… the women in the terminal, there must have been six or seven of us, not women who knew each other, approached and surrounded her and the little boy and we knelt down and formed a circle around them. I sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” to the little boy… one woman had an orange that she peeled, one woman had a little toy in her bag that she let the toddler play with, another woman gave the mom a bottle of water. Someone else helped the mom get the kid’s sippy cup out of her bag and give it to him. It was so gorgeous, there was no discussion and no one knew anyone else, but we were able to calm them both down, and she got her child on the plane.

Only women approached. After they went through the door we all went back to our separate seats and didn’t talk about it… we were strangers, gathering to solve something. It occurred to me that a circle of women, with a mission, can save the world.

I will never forget that moment.

The Flight to San Francisco

5/1/2020

 
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On the plane to San Francisco to lead a two-day writers' workshop (after a few beautiful days in Houston, seeing my parents and brother).
 
There's a girl sitting behind me on the plane – maybe three or four years old – sitting between her parents. She's keeping up a long, animated conversation with herself and/or them; she's singing, making observations, asking to be read to, asking what things are outside the window, looking for her coloring book, creating a village with little dolls, telling her parents she loves them.
 
Her parents aren't shushing her at all, which I love, even though it's not a quiet conversation and we're in a crowded plane.
 
And I remember that my mother was occasionally called up to my elementary school because I would sing in class (to myself), and it was "disruptive," (“students should be quiet,") and I apparently asked all those questions too, endlessly, and it occurred to me that at some point so many people lose that... the singing, observing, asking, playing, seeing, coloring. But we started out as that.
 
And then there are the people who grow up and stay that way. The actors, singers, dancers, writers, painters, poets... artists who missed or ignored the prompt about being quiet. That's why we have tribes. To be with other people who still play.
 
Those are the people I want to spend my time with.

Part Two (later that day)
 
My friends. There's a part two of my airplane story from earlier today. The one of the child behind me who was so animated and joyful that it prompted me to write about a post about it. I didn't look at the family, I just listened, and I assumed the kid was a girl, but it turns out that he was a boy. I was sorry to misgender him in that post, but here's why I'm writing again.
 
The boy sitting between his parents, who turned out to be four years old, was a cancer patient. He was on his way back from two months at St. Jude's, and thirty (thirty, the mom said) rounds of chemotherapy for an advanced cancer. This was said to me because I turned around toward the end of the flight to tell them how much I Ioved sitting in front of them and how great their kid was.
 
I told the mom I had posted about them on Facebook, which made her laugh. I told her how wonderful their parenting was, that they never once told him to shush. The boy was coming home after two months and was about to undergo radiation. He had lost all his hair and was so gaunt, with deep circles under his eyes, but he was the kid sitting behind me that I wrote about because he was so alive. Singing, coloring, making a doll village, looking out the window, asking questions, telling his parents he loves them.
 
This changes the story, because to me this is the story. The resilience of children. The joy after suffering all that. It's startling.
 
I will never forget this kid.
 
There are very few things I've experienced in my lifetime, certainly in an airplane, that went as deep into my heart as this.  

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  • Home
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