I’ve arrived in Iceland. A story….I was annoyed from the airport security experience in the Barcelona airport. I was tired from only 5 hours of sleep. On the plane I sat down and tried to read but I fell asleep. Soon I woke in a daze and noticed our flight delayed and a commotion coming from next to me. The French couple sitting beside me were trying to communicate with the English guy behind us who spoke terrible French and ask him how they will make there flight to Singapore once we land in Heathrow. They were in their sixties I guessed and the French woman had a loud voice and I found it annoying at first as I ached for sleep and quiet. I’m sure the whole plane heard their conversation. In French she asked a ton of questions like “We are flying to Singapore at 8:30pm? What do we do? Do we have time? How do we get there? What about our bags?” The English gentleman had the hardest time getting the words out of his mouth about transfer and terminals and time and soon enough the stewardess, who only spoke Spanish, got involved and the French wife pulled out her folder full of all their travel documents and asked the same questions again…in French. The husband didn’t say much. And it was obvious that he enjoyed listening to his wife talk about their flight to Singapore which is where they would transfer to their flight to Thailand which would be their final destination. I wondered if he had travelled before, if this was her first trip.
I understood almost everything but I was too tired to get involved or even look at them, and I drifted in and out of sleep as she told everyone around us, whether they understood her or not, how they drove from Montpellier to Barcelona, how they were now flying to London and wanted to know how to get to their next plane which would take them to Singapore and then to Thailand. At one point the Spanish girl in front of us turned around and tried to help them make sense of the big mystery that seemed to me like it wasn’t a mystery at all. I think the husband knew exactly how to get to their next flight connection but he just sat there not saying anything. He just smiled and listened to his wife go on and on trying to talk to the English gentleman behind us and the Spanish girl in front of us, neither of whom spoke enough French to make these conversations productive in the least. I was tempted to chime in as I spoke more French then both of them but I stayed out of it and read, slept, read, slept.
I was so immersed in the final chapters of my book that I hardly notice when we touched ground again. I stood even though I would normally sit until everyone had started moving. But I’m in the aisle seat and I assume this couple is anxious to get up and grab their bags.
When we get up and crunch into the aisle of the plane I finally see their faces. They’re in front of me and they look at me and smile. I regret not looking at them before. She thanks the English gentleman and the Spanish girl. The English wishes her a Bon Voyage on their trip to Thailand and I see her smile so big, her teeth stained from years of coffee and cigarettes. She replies with the giggle of a small school girl “Vacance!”, meaning holiday. They’re going on Holiday and I can tell coz they’re both dressed in white and they look like they’re headed somewhere warm. I watch as they talk to eachother in French. She’s short and round with a wide bottom and blue eyes and yellow hair and yellow teeth. He is tall with a handsome face and the kindest green eyes and I think he’s much more beautiful than her. But God, he looks at her with so much love and I can tell he thinks she’s the most beautiful woman on the plane. Right there my heart stopped. They giggle and he hands her a straw hat. She tucks her hair into the hat and he watches her as she puts on lipstick. She playfully reaches up as if to put some lipstick on him and they laugh. He continues to watch her with joy as she checks herself in her compact mirror and smiles at him. There is so much tenderness and youth between them. So much pleasure!
They smile together and the tears start to roll down my face. Suddenly I want to know everything about them. I wonder how long they have saved for this vacation. Is this something she’s waited on her entire life? I wonder if they have children and grandchildren. I wonder if they know how beautiful they are. And suddenly I want to tell them. I want to tell her when she looks back at me that she’s beautiful “tu es belle” but I don’t. Instead I keep watching them as I quietly cry. When we walk out the plane I walk close by them until we have to go our separate ways and then I cry even more. And in that moment of separation I desperately wished, more than anything I’ve wished for lately, more than my own happiness that they made it to that flight, and every other flight after that to Thailand.
I realized in my tears how much I want to believe in love like that. There it was right before my eyes. This couple so old and beautiful, so in love. They held hands as they walked away together looking for their flight to Singapore and I wanted to be them one day. I wanted to be her. I want love like that. It seems no one hardly believes in it anymore. But there on that crappy flight from Barcelona I saw it with my own eyes and it shook me to the core. Is it so rare? It feels so rare. And I think how sad that it’s so rare. How sad. And I felt a little sad. I’ve heard too many times that love like that isn’t real. People get bored and marriage falls apart and fairy tales don’t exist. But there I saw it with my own eyes and I felt it with my own heart. It does exist and it’s real and I’m a believer.