28. Frequent Flier Miles Don’t Get You What You Think They Will

Frequent Flier Miles Don't Get You What You Think They Will

I'm in the last row of the plane.

To get a ticket on the first flight out, there were no other options. I'm sitting between a mom in the window seat cradling her crying baby and a man in the aisle seat drinking straight vodka (at 8:00 a.m.) and shooting daggers at the baby, as though that will help make anyone feel better.

"It might help if I could grab her spare pacifier," the mother says. "Or I should say the spare of her spare. The others are on the ground."

"I'm happy to hold her while you grab it," I say. "Is that weird to offer…"

Before I finish speaking, she drops the baby into my arms. I hold her against my chest, cradle her sweet head as her mother leaps out of the seat, climbing over me and past the guy in the aisle, who of course doesn't sit up a modicum, or move his legs out of her way.

The mother reaches for her diaper bag in the overhead bin, searching for the pacifier. Then she crawls back into her seat. But, like a miracle, her baby is quiet and sleeping in my arms.

"Wow," she says. "Impressive."

"Beginner's luck."

She reaches her arms out to take her daughter back, but I see it in her face, the fear that any movement will wake her.

"You know, I don't mind holding her while she's sleeping. If you're comfortable with that—"

"Are you sure?"

I smile and start to say I am when our surly seatmate chimes in. "Yes please! For crying out loud. Hold her!"

I shoot him a look. "We've got this. But thank you."

He shakes his head and looks away. Then I turn back toward the mother.

"I'm good, honestly."

The mother nods, gently touching her baby on the arm. "Thank you," she says, letting out a breath. An exhale. The first of this plane ride.

She gives me a grateful smile. "You must have kids?"

"Not yet."

"But you'd like one?"

I nod. "I would."

"Hmm. You got the person?"

"May have just lost him."

"This is turning into a depressing conversation."

She lets out a small laugh. And maybe it's a bit too loud—the promising sound of her mother—because the baby starts to gurgle in my arms. The mother puts her hand on the baby's back, and she starts to settle again.

"This little one's daddy is having a bit of a hard time adjusting to parenthood, so I'm going to stay with my sister for a bit. Give him a little room."

"That sounds like a needed trip."

"Let's hope. My sister is pretty much the smartest person I know, and she told me to get on the plane. She said if you are looking for answers you can't find, you need to change the question."

That hits me, how true that is. "Sounds like she is operating on a different level."

"Well, she's living with five roommates and they're all unemployed, so…" she says. "Bit of a mixed bag."

I smile, adjusting the baby, trying to keep her comfortable. "So, what's your new question?"

"Will my being gone knock it out of him?" She shrugs. "The parts I don't recognize."

I nod. That's what we are often fighting against, isn't it? The parts in someone we don't recognize. The parts we are trying to reconcile. Aren't my current questions, as large and impossible as they are, circling around that exact thing? What happened to my father that I wasn't there to see? What did I miss about who he was? Where do those things intersect?

Also this. What should I be asking instead that will get me to a clearer picture of what happened on the cliff that night? That will get me somewhere better. Meredith Cooper comes into my head: There are no wrong questions when you're grieving. Jonathan: He was nothing if not loyal. Inez: He loved all of us, the best he could.

My mother: Oh, for Pete's sake… It's like you don't know your father at all.

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the question is not only who my father was. Maybe it has more to do with this—for all of us, doesn't it have more to do with this? Who, at the end of the day, did my father wish he could have been?

"So," she says. "Now that I overshared, you go. What's so urgent that you're heading across the country last-minute?"

"How did you know this is last-minute?"

"Middle seat. Last row. What's going on?"

But, just then, the baby's gurgles get louder, and suddenly she is awake, taking me in, a woman she doesn't belong to, and starts clawing to get back to her mother, her cries turning into loud shrieks.

"Cancel that," she says. "You're on your own."