Suspended

The plane was stalled; it was sitting there on the tarmac, engines running, air circulating, fortunately. I had a window seat, so I'd been gazing out the window at luggage cars coming and going, and now I could see a group of police cars, flashing lights, and other emergency-type vehicles converged on a plane nearby, maybe two planes down the tarmac from ours. This always made me think of my family, although my family was back at home, while I was on this plane, going to a conference. My family couldn’t be in those emergency vehicles. Somebody's family was, but it wasn't mine.

Behind me, a Vietnamese lady was talking to a lawyer; they didn’t know each other before they got on the plane. She was young, and pretty with perfect English, yet still clearly Vietnamese. She did research on legal custody disputes left over from Operation Babylift, which involved the removal of Vietnamese orphans from Vietnam right at the end of the war. What happened, the best I can figure from eavesdropping, was that mothers gave up their babies as helicopters were leaving Vietnam, very dramatically; they didn’t know if they’d ever see these babies again; in some cases they signed away their rights, and in others, they didn’t. Years later, when they had the means, they came looking to be reunited with their children. The lawyer on the plane tended to side with the adoptive families, and their rights, not so much because he was an adoption lawyer, but just because he saw both sides of everything, and he could see the pain, and the legal violation, involved in taking on a young child as your own, and then having the mother come back around looking for him.

Did I say we were just standing here on the tarmac? Yes, according to the pilot, it was because of a generator for the right engine, a maintenance issue, which they would deal with as soon as possible. Who knew what was happening nearby? But there were the police, and a few other sets of flashing lights. Now the plane between us in our stalled-out plane, and the one with the emergency, was backing up, and the view was blocked. But there was a fire truck over there, red and blue lights flashing, and the police, and a few other kinds of emergency trucks. It was a gathering of important people.

Kinship is an odd thing, said the lawyer, and he seemed to be getting at the idea that an adoptive family can create it out of thin air, and have it, and this can be extremely important and worth fighting for. And if they had a good lawyer, of course that lawyer was going to attack the mother. That was his job. He had to jab and find weaknesses in her position, which was that the child was hers all along, and only taken from her by the vagaries of fate and war. “Why did you give up the child?” he would ask. “You knew that child would now be brought up by somebody else!” For a while they discussed the pressure of the situation: the helicopters waiting, the certainty of a bad fate for children who were half American, or whose parents were on the wrong side of the war, anyone who was left behind. Those circumstances, it seemed, were public knowledge; even the lawyer knew them, and he hadn’t come anywhere close to any of these cases. The woman looked at him with a kind of alienation. To her, kinship was biological; what the adoptive families had was conjured up, created, illusory, and couldn't even be compared. Much as she checked, and most Americans agreed with the lawyer, i'd say she was getting disappointed.

It was a large plane, with a large center aisle, though I had a window seat. I should mention that though I was eavesdropping, I think they knew it; they talked as if I were listening, and I nodded every once in a while. Next to me was a woman who was also going to a conference, but hers was more about storytelling, or oral tradition, or some such thing, though she was reading stories on a small computer with headphones on. Going up the middle aisle, every four or five seats or so, there was a television above the seats, mounted on the frame of the airplane, and these televisions had a continuous loop of famous and gorgeous world tourist sites. There was crashing waves on a wide beach, a mountain scene, sunset over the ocean, a wide landscape of desert canyons, a mountain scape of a Himalaya Range, and then back to the beginning, same sights as we already saw not five minutes ago. It made me mad, because it made me feel stuck, suspended. I’d be absolutely claustrophobic if it weren’t for the window.

Word came again from the cabin: they were almost done checking this generator and dealing with it. The woman next to me had now fallen asleep. Most of us, as far as I could tell, felt that if the airline was going to have a generator problem, they should go ahead and find it now. Go right ahead and check, I felt like saying. Whatever you do, it’ll probably be better than the alternative.

The woman and the man behind me were now talking about a particular case, a case that the woman had researched, one in which a young girl was involved. This young girl was the last of three siblings, and the desperate mother had come after her as her last hope, having lost the older brothers in similar tragic circumstances. The mother had never signed away custody of the daughter. The woman behind me described a meeting, set up by the legal authorities, in which the mother was allowed to meet the daughter, but the meeting was highly controlled, and the adoptive parents, as well as the lawyer, were right on the site, to help the young girl interpret everything the mother tried to communicate. There were transcripts of everything that had happened, and the woman had studied them closely. Just bringing gifts to the daughter didn’t seem to make it any easier for the mother; although they had a birth bond, it was hard for the young girl to understand the mother's idea that that bond should be more important than everything else she had experienced up to that point.

The lawyer took sides here, and objected to her idea that the birth bond was an overarching concern. It wasn't more important, he said. When the judge tries to figure out what’s best for the child, how can it be best to start all over?

The televisions in the cabin now switched to the safety message, because our plane was about to take off. Most of the cabin had to be quiet as the television marched through all the things one was supposed to do in an emergency. On some flights I tune this out altogether, as I cannot imagine anything going wrong, and don't even want to try to imagine it. But on this flight, remember that I’d just been watching at least a half-dozen emergency vehicles fussing around the underbelly of some enormous jumbo jet, and I was ready to contemplate all the various possibilities. When I listened to these safety messages, I always listened for what we call, in our household, the stewardess rule, which put simply, is that one should put one's own oxygen mask on before trying to help others. When I come home from an outing with a few very starving kids, and everyone is about to keel over from starvation, I sometimes feed myself in the process of feeding them, and I use the stewardess rule as justification. Make sure you can survive before you reach out to save others. My wife, however, considers this just selfishness, but what does she know about how close I am to keeling over? And, if I can't function myself, there's absolutely no sense talking about fixing food for anyone!

The very nature of airports, to me, was that I was suspended, away from my family; the household was functioning without me. Ordinarily I took family life for granted; I couldn't imagine not having a family, or being torn from my family as a child, or being forced to choose. But something told me that the situation the woman described was very personal; that, perhaps, she had been the girl in the story. She was unable to reconcile what had happened, and so, years later, here she was, still studying it. I got this idea from the fact that she seemed to be getting upset, right there in front of us, as if the lawyer had said something that struck her to the bone. He hadn't, as far as I could tell, but he too recognized this sensitivity, and backed off a little, as the plane took off, and this gave her a little time to recover.

Once the plane got above the clouds there was a surprise waiting for us: It was very sunny up there. There was a huge blue sky. The clouds, which were below us now, made a huge soft white blanket, and, from the window where I was sitting, it looked like the Arctic, really, miles and miles of nothing but white with a huge blue sky.

It seemed like there wasn't much left to say; she had expressed what she'd found through her research, which was that the mother would stop at nothing to be reunited with her child, yet she had found this massive wall of legal procedures, meant to prevent that, and protect the adoptive family. We, of the western culture, couldn't fathom how that appeared to the mother, how cruel and heartless that was. The mother was shattered, once again, losing her daughter as she had lost everything else, once again a war victim.

The woman, drained from relating the tale, and having gotten us to understand the mother's pain, now fell asleep. She too was going to a conference, to talk about her findings; the lawyer was going yet somewhere else. We were all suspended up there, high in the air, as the flight attendants brought their cart, and served drinks from it, and skipped the poor woman, who was now sound asleep.

3-28-2015

Tradition

Dae let his woman companion, Eun Mi, talk him into telling the story of how he changed airlines and got a new job. They were at the udong (noodle) restaurant in Narita airport, Tokyo, and it was a pleasant day; they had time, though the sun was setting outside a nearby window. It was a busy udong restaurant, and Dae constantly scanned for people he knew in the airlines business. Sometimes he thought he’d find the pilot of that Malaysian plane, for example, who he swore he knew, but he never did; that guy had disappeared anyway, with his entire plane.

The airport, he felt, was where cultures came together. You had the traditional, beautiful, restrictive Asian cultures, and all the people leaving them. You had the udong restaurant itself, so much healthier than, say, McDonalds. You had the sense of being at the edge of the culture, with planes taking off and up out of it every minute. When you flew up out of Narita, you could always see the Japanese islands sparkling in the sun below, but they were islands: contained, trapped, restrictive.

But here, Eun Mi was eager to hear about why he took a new job, so he told her. Eun Mi was quite beautiful; her Asian features were set off by the afternoon light and she took a lively interest in him and in things that had happened to him.

He had been chief steward on an international flight about a month ago, and there were all kinds of people on it, Americans, Europeans, Koreans, Japanese. Everyone had their own ideas, even though they knew they were in international air space. The wealthy woman in seat 11 felt like everyone should know who she was, daughter of the owner of the airline. The flight attendant, a young woman who was under Dae’s supervision, didn’t know who the wealthy woman was, and didn’t seem to care. The flight attendant gave her nuts in a bag like she gave everyone else; she handed her the bag. She didn’t use two hands or a deferential way to hand her the bag. She just gave her the nuts.

Dae heard about this later; at the time it happened, he was in the front of the plane dealing with a businessman. But the wealthy lady, daughter of the owner of the airline, was now enraged and insisting that she be served nuts on a plate, not in a bag. And she had also mentioned something about getting the flight attendant fired. She was demanding to speak to important people, even though the plane was about to take off. Dae just wanted to hide. He knew he was the next in line; soon she would be coming after him.

When she did, he defended the flight attendant. On impulse, he defended the flight attendant. He knew that he could force the flight attendant to make a deep bow of apology and serve her nuts on a plate, but he didn’t. The plane was about to take off, and the pressure was on for them to get everyone in their seats. Though the take-off was delayed, people still had to be in their seats for safety reasons. Dae decided that everyone should just receive a bag of nuts, and be grateful. If the wealthy heiress didn’t like it, she could complain later. He knew he could lose his job for this; after all, her father was the owner of the airline. But at that moment, he didn’t care. He didn’t feel like forcing everyone to bow deferentially to this monstrous woman.

Eun Mi listened intently to this story, but reacted somewhat opposite of what Dae would expect. Although he had painted the heiress as monstrous, she sympathized somewhat with the heiress, as she was, after all, defending tradition, and the right to be respected and received in a deferential way. She was also upholding the idea that this airline would maintain the deferential Asian traditions in spite of relentless modernization. And she was suspicious of the flight attendant, possibly because, in the story, Dae was defending her, taking her side, and Eun Mi was perhaps jealous. Dae couldn’t quite figure out why Eun Mi would react the way she did, but he kept telling the story.

So the heiress was complaining bitterly to Dae, while still another flight attendant was going through the safety instructions with the passengers. Tie the life preserver on, and put the oxygen mask on your face, this kind of stuff. Once the plane started going, it was all over, everyone had to just sit down, be quiet, and live through the flight, which in this case was only going to Tokyo. The woman was quite intense about it, though. Heads would roll, she would make sure of that. Now she wanted the Dae fired as well; she made that clear, and told him he was fired. She would be treated with more respect on this airline. If she wanted her nuts on a plate, she would get them.

Dae spoke for a while with the pilot. Outside, an intense monsoon rain started on the tarmac. This was probably much more dramatic for passengers who don’t fly regularly, than those who do. Dae, for example, had seen rains like this many times, and knew the pilot could fly in them perfectly well. This would not be an issue. The woman continued to harp at him, and he was near her seat; he now wanted to sit down as the plane was slowly moving into position to take off. It would be a huge ordeal to thwart the takeoff, and do as she demanded: go back, and fire the flight attendant and Dae, and start the flight over. But that’s what she demanded, and now she was working on the pilot.

The pilot talked Dae into taking the flight attendant to her seat, bowing, and offering an apology. They did, but it was quick, and she interpreted it as insincere, which it was. They were thinking about the next step, which was taking off. She, the wealthy woman, was thinking that the entire reputation of her airline came down to this quick, shallow apology. She became even more infuriated and this time went straight to the pilot’s cabin. They didn’t stop her.

The plane was delayed on the tarmac while the pilot dealt with her, and they could hear her insistent voice over the engine noises. Finally, the pilot relented, and the plane turned around, and went back to the gate, where the pilot, Dae, the flight attendant, the woman and a few other people got out of the plane and went up into the gate. If I’m going to get fired, thought Dae, let her do it in the gate, in front of everyone. In the gate, she was again the daughter of the owner; everyone there knew her much better. But Dae knew some of them too; as an airline employee he had worked with all of them at one time or another. Someone assured Dae that it wasn’t over yet. In fact, right as Dae waited, to see what would come next, the woman was now arrested, on the grounds that it was illegal to stop a plane that was already on its way on the tarmac. Dae was surprised at this; he certainly hadn’t demanded her arrest. Dae kept his head down. The heiress screamed and complained loudly at the police. But the police, three young men, stuck to their orders. People who disrupted a plane in its takeoff mode were endangering hundreds of airline passengers, and were to be arrested. It was that simple. They put her in handcuffs and took her away; she shouted her protest at every step.

At the trial she was contrite, wearing prison garb, and she actually had to serve time, in spite of her family’s money and influence. Somebody somewhere was quite strict about people disrupting a plane’s takeoff procedure, and there wasn’t much room in the law to slap her wrist and let her go. Dae, by this time, had gotten a job at another airline; he didn’t want to keep dealing with her or her father, who would ultimately get him back in some way or another. At the trial, however, he learned that the father also had resigned his post, in shame.

Dae let it be known that he didn’t call in the police. He was not a vengeful person, and never wanted to see another’s life ruined. He and the pilot may have known that the police would get involved. He and the pilot may have known that turning around the plane would make everyone a little late, and wouldn’t truly endanger anyone, but would attract the attention of the police. He and the pilot may have known, also, that the pilot really was not too put out by the rainy weather, or the reversal, or the driving back to the gate.

Eun-Mi’s jaw was set in an unbelieving position, but Dae really didn’t know much more about what happened to the wealthy woman or her father, or how it could be that the owner’s daughter could end up in jail, and the father disgraced, over a bag of nuts. It was one of the bigger scandals to rock the airline world, but Dae tried to keep it quiet, generally, and he was grateful that he was still working anywhere at all. Eun-Mi was so taken aback that she was quiet for almost a minute. And right in that minute, Dae saw the flight attendant whom he had defended. He called her over and introduced her to Eun-Mi. Eun-Mi flushed and became embarrassed. Dae could sense that Eun-Mi was embarrassed, if only because she had just spoken of the woman, albeit without any idea that she would ever meet her. Now, here she was, in front of them, at the udong restaurant.

She was embarrassed to see him, and said she believed she had been responsible for his losing his job. No, he told her, he’d changed jobs of his own accord; the  wealthy woman, having been arrested, had not been able to ensure that he’d get fired first.

The flight attendant, young and pretty, with a western air about her, had quit that day as well, she said. But it had nothing to do with the incident; it was because she had recently married the pilot. On the day that had happened, she said, the pilot had proposed to her. She had no strong memory of what had happened at all, being euphoric from the proposal, and would have gladly bowed a hundred times if he had asked her. But she had appreciated the way he had defended her. And now she too became embarrassed, and bowed several times to Eun-Mi. She was pregnant, she said. She would meet the pilot here in Narita, and he would be waiting for her. The pilot, too, wanted as little attention possible drawn to his own situation. 

Eun-Mi used her chopsticks to play with her last noodle until it disintegrated. The woman, still embarrassed, made a quick bow and went on her way.

3-9-2015