Love at 36,000 feet
The Best Flight I’ve Ever Taken
In my mid 20s I took a nonstop jumbo jet flight from Tokyo to Paris.
As the flight departed I heard babies crying farther back in the plane. As former caregiver for 30 preschoolers at a rural Japanese orphanage, I couldn’t resist going to introduce myself.
Three young nurses were accompanying sixteen Korean orphan babies, many of whom were unhappy due to health problems. The orphans had found homes with Swedish families. The nurses were obviously overwhelmed, so I took a seat and began helping comfort the infants.
For 20 sleepless hours, rocking unhappy babies back to sleep. An unforgettably fulfilling journey.
Decades later, I happened to be on a subway in Stockholm and noticed a young Korean woman reading a Swedish newspaper. She was the right age: could she have been one of those babies?
Before I could say anything, she stood up and left the train. So I’d never know for sure.
That didn’t matter. I’d gotten my reward decades earlier, 36,000 feet above the ocean.
