SeaTac

Departing Seattle yesterday, my sister-in-law and nephew parked the car in the short-term structure and followed me inside.  This was an unusual move, but these are unusual times for me.  And everyone seems to sense this.  More remarkably, I did not protest.  I rumbled among the cars, down the familiar glass bridge into the terminal, making my way to the desk of Virgin America, so-called airline.  

Could I have a seat in the bulkhead row, please?  The agent, hip as could be in dreadlocks, had a go at his computer keyboard.  Yes, he said, row four.  I knew better, actually.  I wasn't born yesterday.  I was born several days before, and in the interim, critical life skills have slowly built up in my brain.  One is the retention of comfort zones aboard airliners.  In this Airbus, we are talking row three.  With a somewhat higher level of psychic comfort I would have pursued this matter.  But I did not.  It dropped.  And I made my way toward what in the perverse parlance of airports is dubbed security.  I presented my ticket, my drivers license and waved goodbye to the family.  Continuing toward Inspection Land, I looked around and waved goodbye to Debbie one more time.  I felt like a kid nervously going off to college, anxious and unaccustomed to what lay ahead.  Even though what lay ahead was nothing more exotic than the new wing at SeaTac.  The international wing.  I have been there a time or two, but this didn't matter.  Everything feels shaky.  I approached one of the nation's Homeland Security professionals, asked if he would deconstruct my wheelchair beast of burden, and watched while the ritual of laptop-removal-from-bag, keys out of pocket, hat off of head, played itself out.  I sat glum and passive while the usual indignities were done to me.

'I'm using the back of my hand.'  I looked up at the guy, a 40-something man with plastic gloves, running his fingers up and down the crotch of a 62-year-old Jewish quadriplegic in a wheelchair.  I wondered if there couldn't be some public sign at such moments, a big electronic sucker with lights that flash and text that streams words like 'THIS TRAVELER'S THREAT LEVEL ORANGE.'  Or maybe 'THIS TRAVELER'S THREAT LEVEL LUDICROUSLY LOW.'  I mean, why not?  Your tax dollars at work.

Things still felt shaky emerging from the inspection area and heading toward the gate.  Logically, I knew that I could not be in safer surroundings.  All the most dire scenarios were coming at me.  The wheelchair mysteriously stopping.  Me having a heart attack.  Or on the more plausible front, the sudden failure of the SeaTac air conditioning system, overburdened on this record-breaking 100°F day.  What would happen?  I could summon help within about 30 seconds.  This has got to be one of the safest places anywhere.  Gun-free.  Explosives-free.  Carefree.  None of this mattered.  The source of my anxiety is opaque and mysterious to me.

Having been placed in a non-bulkhead row, and conveniently on the aisle, I knew better than to take my seat.  Two other passengers were going to do the same right next to me, and in the tight quarters that constitute coach, I was going to have to stand up again anyway.  And standing up aboard an airplane being something of a quadriplegic feat, I decided to remain vertical.  Boarding passengers kept asking me if I wanted to get into the aisle.  No, I told them.  I felt like saying, no thank you, I'm going to San Francisco.  But this would be snide.  I was feeling snide.

Of course, of all the logical sources of anxiety, one would think that the actual flight would rank high.  It didn't.  I stared idly at the SeaTac runway rushing by, the southern Seattle suburbs dropping away and turned my attention to The New Yorker.  A mistake these days.  For some reason, I just don't have patience with the same sort of polemical articles I've read for years.  I borrowed the magazine from my brother, having put my own subscription on hold.  Who could not be moved, even somewhat outraged 70 years on, by the death of Garcia Lorca and the perennially oblivious response of the Spanish nation?  Me.  These days topics that once fired me up have little effect.  I hope this is only temporary.

San Francisco.  The days are getting shorter.  At 7:40 PM there are definite signs of dusk.  Passengers clomp down the aisle, their heavy bags swinging into the seats.  Children wander here and there, some looking backwards, some forward.  They don't know where they are.  They want to know where their parents are.  So do I.  More to the point, I want to know why their parents are on this plane trundling their bags slowly past my seat, when there were so many other flights available.  I wait and wait.  Finally, there is a break in the exodus.  I swing my legs into the aisle, but this is premature.  More passengers, more bags.  If Messrs. Virgin America only had the sense to not charge for baggage, their planes would empty much more quickly, I guarantee it.  Finally, a flight attendant helps me to my feet, and I make my way to the front.  

At the door there is the usual confusion.  Oh, did you have your own wheelchair?  I nod.  The flight crew on this airline are just a little too hip and a little too clueless.  By the time I make it to the door, I'm just a little too impatient.  No, I tell the flight attendant brusquely, I do not want a push chair.  An attendant has brought one to the door.  I want my wheelchair.  That one, parked in the background for reasons that are unclear.  The wheelchairs are switched.  Rather gruffly, I tell one flight attendant to hold my wrist while I step down to the jetway.  That footrest needs to be bent into the correct position, I tell no one in particular.  The wheelchair attendant bends it for me.  Everyone is looking at me, and I'm not imagining this.  And their looks are not fond.  I can see now what happens to a chronically anxious person when he happens to be disabled.  He turns into one of those chronically querulous handicapped types that turn up in the final scene of Ethan Frome.

I'm aware of this waiting for my bag to appear among those rotating into view in the luggage claim room.  A man offers to help me grab my bag when it appears.  I thank him.  He only has one arm.  I want to say something jaunty about how the two of us do so well with our single useful limbs.  But this isn't necessary.  It's readily apparent.  All I have to do is thank him, and thank him heartily.  No problem, he says.  Good.  It's not his problem I need to think about.