Planes are designed to be comfortable. They are temperature-controlled, full of fabric seats that come with lights and tv screens, and equipped with a team of people that dress in fancy clothing to bring refreshments. I can still remember the first time I stepped off a plane and found myself in a much harsher world.
This morning, when it was negative sixteen degrees, I heard a plane land. The passengers would soon be walking through a frigid tunnel, cursing their fatigue and shaky legs. I pitied them.
I am sensitive. As a child, I found myself unable to discard any object lest I hurt its feelings. I once cried for hours because I swept up a dust bunny. Though I’m now older and better at concealing my emotions, they have never left me. I was devastated when I imagined the plane's landing. I was locked in my house, heat cranked up with a blanket around my shoulders, when I heard it rumble across the sky. For a moment, the chill in my fingertips was gone. I thought of nothing but the passengers, thrust into what may well be the worst cold of their lives.
I do not matter to the passengers. The sadness I feel for them is irrelevant. Nonetheless, I continued to think about them as my day went on. I pulled on a coat to get my neighbors’ mail. They were out of town, and had asked me to handle their mail and garden while they were away. I only had to run a few feet before I was back inside the warmth of my home. How long were the passengers outside, I wondered? Did one of them get stuck waiting for a taxi? I closed my eyes and tried to push the thought away.
I washed my lunch dishes. I’d have burned my hands under the hot water if I didn’t work in a kitchen. Were the passengers from a warm climate, where such heat was as natural as breathing? I dried off a plate. Did they miss it?
I cried after I heard the plane land. It’s a silly thing to admit. Something in its landing must have been important, though, because I keep returning to this piece weeks after I began it. I wonder if the passengers do the same. When they have friends over, do they stop to tell them about that awful time they landed in a subzero dystopia?
It is every likelihood they don’t. They are all different from me, and the odds of our minds getting stuck on the same minutiae are absurdly low. Perhaps, for them, this is a blessing. They are spared from recollecting the brutality of midwinter, while I, who sat in warmth, can’t seem to escape the thought.