Why I recommend weeping with strangers on planes.
I was listening to a podcast today (We Can Do Hard Things - an absolute must if you haven’t listened) and they were interviewing Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. She talks about this instance where she’s walking through her college campus as young freshman and feeling quite down and lonely. There’s an older woman walking towards her who notices her and simply says, “persevere,” and continues walking.
The older woman recognizes that Ketanji is going through something, and gives her a bit of encouragement to keep going.
They use the word angel to describe this woman, and it got me thinking about an incident I had a few months ago while I was travelling with my family back to America.
I’ve got two young children, a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a six-and-a-half-year-old son. We were travelling from Sydney to Los Angeles for the first time with both kids in tow and my son was having a really tough time.
My son Cooper is autistic, so we knew we’d have some tantrums to contend with, and we had been prepping him for months about the airport and the plane ride.
He did remarkably well in the airport, but when it came time to get on the plane he got really overwhelmed. It was the start of perhaps four to five major meltdowns, which in Coop’s case means crying, screaming, hitting and kicking for a minimum of thirty minutes or more.
When he’s in a proper meltdown (not a tantrum – two different very different things), you just have to ride it out with him. There’s not a ton you can say or do besides telling him that it’s ok to be upset and just making sure that you keep him and everyone around him safe.
On perhaps his second or third meltdown, this absolute angel of a woman appeared and asked if she could do anything to help. It turns out she is getting her master’s degree in special education and grew up with an autistic sister.
She tried to download his favourite TV shows on her iPad (we had an epic fail and didn’t pre-download any of his shows as we naively thought we could just stream everything using the wi-fi on the plane - fark). She was asking about his special interests and offering up her own children’s colouring books, toys and special snacks. She just generally wanted to help our kiddo out and support us in any way she could.
When Coop finally calmed down she went back to her seat. A little while later she came over again but I had turned my head towards the window and was silently balling my eyes out. The relief of the meltdown finally ending mixed with the weight of making it through the rest of the plane ride hit me and I was sobbing uncontrollably. She thought I was asleep and tried to tell my husband that she had made something for me and when I looked up I could see she had crafted a stickers-by-number flower bouquet. She said that since she couldn’t buy me flowers on the plane, this was the next best thing.
Cue even more tears and she is hugging me and telling me that everything is going to be ok. That Coop is going to be ok not just in this moment, but in life.
That she has a sister who is autistic and she lives out of home and has a job and a really wonderful life. That everything we are doing right now matters and it will pay off. Every single therapy, every sacrifice. It’s all worth it.
I am fully sobbing into this stranger’s arms now, (like full-on ugly crying), and I don’t care. It is the sweetest relief I have felt in a long time.
To have someone see our family and understand our struggle (and truly care) was the best medicine I could have asked for in that moment. She didn’t fix anything, Coop still hit a few more rough spots, but to know that there are people in this world that see you and understand what you are going through somehow makes that cross a little bit easier to bear. It’s as if she took it for a while and said, “it’s ok to just rest it here.” It was healing, it was inspiring, and it was god-damned life-affirming.
I’m not a religious person. But I believe I’m becoming more spiritual. And I think that the universe conspired to put that woman on the plane to help us. Would you believe there were also two other special education teachers on that flight as well?
My daughter and I were initially seated right next to one before they moved us to be closer to my husband and son. We were chit-chatting as we were settling into our seats and I mentioned that my son was a bit further behind us (she could clearly hear him, as could the whole plane), and when I started to explain that he is autistic she just said, “that’s ok I’m a special education teacher, I understand.” What are the odds?
There was another special ed teacher who tried to help too before our beautiful angel lady came to our side, but Coop was too distressed to take in anyone new at that point.
So maybe there are angels. Or whatever the hell you want to call it. The universe meeting your needs, giving you a moment of sweet relief and telling you to persevere.
Perhaps it’s all random. But it restored my faith in people. And I hope to be able to pay that forward to another desperate parent. Until then I’m just out here doing the best I can to make it through the day-to-day, hoping that one day we will get out of survival mode.
Sending love to everyone in the trenches right now – I’m with you and I see you.
Hang in there,
Mandy