Dear Children:
Consider this tableau from the Orlando airport: A family submitting to the bureaucratic horrors wrought by thirty years of hijackers and terrorists. The tallest among them was a lean and acned dad, eyes focused on the middle distance. Below him was a twirling, bouncy nine-year-old filled with the spirit of one of the princesses that abound in the Magic Kingdom. Looking up at her was a squalling, mulish two-year-old lashed in a stroller. Surveying him was a laconic infant of uncertain gender about the size of a Shitzu, swaddled across a pair of ample breasts belonging to a mom – bedraggled – with a belly full of child number four.
One should think this is an occasion for all those who had been in similar boats to rush in with aid for an obviously distressed group. Not on your life. Rather, the folks who did not look away were abuzz in the line with murmurings of condemnation. Within earshot of the family were questions about why they were there at all and hopes they would not be seated where personal repose might be disturbed. One supposes that these disapproving ninnies could not imagine a planeload of such families wrung out, amped up, rundown and done-in returning from Mickey’s paradise.
Yet, such was the case. There were diapers and screeching, shouts of unfairness, reports of bladder condition, aisle escapes and all the squawking vocalizations of family life. I heard no fewer than six different words for poop. There were entreaties of all hue and level, most of which fell on deaf ears.
Buster, who occupied a small portion of Mom’s lap, was of a mind to puke away his time in the air. At first, Mom didn’t want to hand him over; insisting she was equal to Buster as well as Roxanne’s sullen presence smoldering in the window seat. She was convinced at a second effortless coaxing.
True to his promise, Buster up-chucked strained beets and belched Enfamil clouds all the way to LaGuardia.
This story is about human needs – the ones we all share -- the little things. We do not refer to the self-satisfied pronouncements on family values of politicians and divines. We refer to universal, commonplace, everyday, unrewarded, golden-ruley decency.
We most certainly do not refer to sacrifice. We mean the easy, part-of-our-day, utterly costless decency that oils the gears of human interaction.
Much Love,
Poppy
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