Dating : Conversation on a Red-Eye

Conversation on a Red-Eye

Her name was Natasha. This beautiful older woman. Early Sixties? Well put together face and done blond hair. Dressed casually, in stretchy all black. Stylish. Had a nice wrap around shoulders and slight cleavage revealed. Very bosomy older lady. She got up from her aisle seat, with a welcoming face and posture, to let me in. With a thick, hard to place accent, she said to me, “yu may it.” You made it.

I barely made it. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I already checked. If you miss it, there’s another flight two hours later.” Ben, my younger brother, had said this to me casually, while maneuvering through traffic, driving me to the airport. He could be annoyingly too casual. I will miss him. But I was ready to get home.

It is nearing midnight now, as I settle into my middle row seat. My window seat companion is already slouched asleep, with his eyes masked and his ears plugged, head against the side. The older blond woman who greeted me is perusing the flight menu.

She catches me looking at her, smiles, and leans slightly towards me to share, “I neva sleep that lell on the led-eye.” I never sleep that well on the red-eye.

I give her a smile of agreement and also look at the drink menu for a sleep aid. I am still curious though. Her words were easy enough to decipher. But her voice was so soft and ragged, yet so jarringly familiar.

While I’m not typically shy with strangers, doing so while in flight, up in the air, required a risk assessment. There is no simple parting of ways, or easy disengaging, when I have to remain seated and next to them for a serious amount of time. I had to weigh how interesting the conversation partner could be to potentially being involved in awkward nothing-chatter.

We both order some red wine and some cheese and crackers. Again her voice. I finally ask her, “Pardon me, but, where are you from?”

With a bright and knowing smile, she says “I am from Vietnam.”

“Oh,” I respond and look over her lovely tanned skin and blond hair. “Indochina?”

She is impressed and replies, “yes.”

Indochina, a time when the French occupied Vietnam. I am pleased with myself that I recall learning of this in school. We introduce ourselves and I find out her name is Natasha.

Her father was a French soldier and her mother was a poor native village young girl. She grew up and remained with her mother. There was a British engineer that was working in Vietnam, who married her and took her to Singapore when she was not yet twenty.

Her marriage was bad. Very bad, abusive. A few years later, with two kids, she escaped to America, to California. She landed in Orange County, and have remained there since. She remarks to me, “ I’m an O.C. girl.”

The flight is dark and quiet. But we continue to chat with low voices. She tells me how she got a job as a bank teller, and at some point opened up a lampshade store. “ I love to refurbish lampshades.” How she sold the store and now does custom work on the side. She is retired and she has been seeing a man fifteen years younger than her. She looks wistfully at me, “he wants to marry me, but I can never do that again.”

She is flying to D.C. to visit her daughter and grandchildren. “My daughter, she has some trouble. I go to help her. Some mental illness. Not good.”

She relays this lightly enough, and we continue at a languid pace. I tell her how I am also dating a young man, that it was new to me to be dating someone this much younger. “He’s twenty seven, I’m thirty five. It’s fun, but a little strange.”

“Oh honey, you can go even younger. As long as there is good, you know.” Her look turns coy. Not too coy though, because she looks to respectable and wise to ever look look that coy.

Then she suddenly turns serious, “ Sex is very important.”

We go back to her daughter. She shows me a picture of her, telling me her name is Amelia. Amelia looks just like Natasha, same high cheekbones and lips. Same slope of shoulders and long neck. She tells me Amelia has been diagnosed as bi-polar since she was a teenager. “Sometimes this is a struggle,” she says, “but I can only support her when I can.”

We drift into some comfortable silence. There is three hours left on the flight. Time flew. I look at Natasha and think about what a lovely surprise she is. She has brown eyes. They are the lightest of brown, and so clear and lively. When she smiled, only the wrinkles around them indicated age. I always wondered if there could be a cream or drug you could take to anti-age your eyes. They were a dead giveaway to hard times or a dull life.

There is only an hour left on the flight. Neither of us can sleep. “Natasha, how did you do it? Get through it all and stay so…this?” I ask her with a smile.

She seems to appreciate my question, and takes her time. “Well, you know, I never really believed in God. But the people who helped me when I got to O.C., they were church people…” her eyes roam a bit in the air.

She finally answers simply, “one day I just opened my heart to God. And invited him in.”

Religion is a funny thing, and can be a touchy subject. I am not an atheist, and I am not a believer. But I’ve always found the question, whether or not there is a God, worked as an interesting lens to view people through, to learn and understand someone. Particularly, of course, when someone has either a strong or converted belief. There always seems to be a compelling moment or series of moments that sheds light. People aren’t just a believer or nonbeliever.

The flight ends, and we exchange numbers. Perhaps we will never meet or talk again.I send her a picture of us. We had taken it at some point, feeling young and girly, when talking about love with young men. I wish her luck with her daughter, and tell her she is so lucky to have beautiful grandchildren. She agrees, “ I am.” I say she is so lucky to look so good still. And she agrees with a big smile, “Oh, yes I know.”