Trigger Warning about thoughts related to self-harm mentioned at the end. Read with care!

Did I mention how hilarious I find it? I am 37 and a thought will attack me as I rush to the bathroom on a poop errand between bells? “Is 2067 the year I die? Is it a number that the universe already knows, or God (if that’s your thing) or does the number not even exist currently as the year I will die in the collective imagining of living things until it happens?” Those thoughts, where do those come from?

On December 24th, 2023, I boarded the Southwest Flight. The flight attendants patiently nudged us “This is a full flight, and there are no seat assignments. Please take the first seat that’s open” and I did not have to look far. There in the second row was my seat. I quickly realized why the seat hadn’t gotten taken before, there were two unaccompanied children in the middle and window.Here am I, Lord, Send me. And then I made two wrong assumptions that these two girls were A: related to each other and B: girls.  

When I was young and impressionable, I read The Book of Jabez with the rest of the Christian book-buying world. It peppered coffee tables across Christian living rooms, in every home I babysat. And from it, readers learned from an overworked single Bible verse from the otherwise esoteric book of 1st Chronicles that we should look for divine appointments, that we should say “Here am I, Lord. Send me!”  (A verse from Isaiah, not 1st Chronicles).

I shoved my carry-on into whatever space was left above, then sat next to the two children. My spirit, never more vibrant than with children, took over. I waved my hands in front of the cloud that was their “energy” and closed my eyes tight. “9!” I guessed opening my eyes at once. She shook her head. They love when I’m wrong. I closed my eyes again then waved my hand like a conductor to “sense” her age by magic. “No, don’t tell me don’t tell meeeeeeeeeeTEN!” I spouted and opened my eyes for confirmation, Middle Seat smiled as big as the whole airplane and shook her head proudly from left to right “No.”

And I hung my head in utter disappointment as their eyes widened with delight. Window Seat tossed back a bag of Airheads like, well, like candy. “Okay, okay…. eleven?!” I wrinkled up my forehead even though, by this point, process of elimination revealed her age. “8” she announced proudly. My heart sank, an 8 year-old and a slightly older-year-old traveling alone on Christmas Eve. Well, alone + me. 

Then Window Seat said “Do me do me!” So I waved my hands with the same fanfare and extracted “11!” And (s)he said no with the same wide smile. I hung my head. Then I guessed again until we all knew: 8, 10, and 37. Window Seat had long hair in a pony tail and diamond earrings, but I honestly was not sure of their gender. So I went ahead and called them “bruh” and that worked for all of us. 

Next, there was to guess birthdays. Middle Seat told me that October was not close to her birthday, but April was (turns out it was.. November 17). I did the same song and dance with their names and favorite colors. At that point it was obvious I would not be writing, or reading, or sleeping, on this flight.

Window Seat pressed the flight attendant button. “Can I get a coke?” We were still ascending and the seatbelt light was still on. By minute 37, I realized that this might be the most memorable flight of my life, simply because children were being children and I was usually ignoring adults when I traveled. 

When the refreshments finally came -Can I get coffee?- Window Seat spurted to the flight attendant.
Appallingly, the attendant said YES. Pendejo. 
He delivered the coffee in cups all the way full, but not with near enough cream to meet their satisfaction. He brought them more cream packets upon their request. This is when I knew this flight attendant was my sworn enemy because the cups were already full.

Normally I liked to take advantage of soaring high above my worries and the dust colonies forming on my painfully overpriced studio apartment’s linoleum to be productive. But I felt relieved, to my surprise, that I had found a greater calling instead, my computer pocketed deep in my backpack below the seat. But truly, I felt relieved to have an escape route from my own mind.

When Middle Seat spit brownie brittle into her coffee cup and I eyed the regurgitated black bits floating at the surface (you know, to make it sweeter), I remembered more firmly than ever why I didn’t (and don’t) want children. But still, this gave me hope that my temporary children Middle Seat and Window Seat were not used to drinking grown-up coffee at all. 

Then Window Seat looked over at me flanking the aisle and asked, clear as a bell, “Why does everyone think I am a girl?” And the air stilled, like the adults in the rows around us leaned in to measure my response. I teach middle school in 2023 and I don’t flinch at the word “pronouns” or “non-binary.” I’m inured to the feckless jokes (usually from the boys): “I identify as “stapler/paperclip’” to another chirping back “I identify as ‘lunchbox/blanket.” But this was different now. I had no lesson objective for the class period, I had no learning standards to meet, I had no intermittent closure, or checks for understanding, or exit ticket. I just had my soul and common decency to guide me, just as it guided most of us piled into an airborne vessel in the name of a holiday. I quickly assessed that this child was not coming out to me as a boy, rather telling me that he was being confused for a girl. 

I responded: -You know, I don’t know why people think that. But, [Window Seat], the next time the flight attendant comes by, you can just say “Excuse me, I am a boy.” And I patted myself on the back for handling this without breaking a sweat. Here am I. Send me.

My sister has two kids, they are 4 and 2, and I am obsessed with them. I think they are easily the most precious, beautiful humans to have ever graced the earth, and I also feel exhausted after I visit. I am not used to toddler blow-ups, the power in those voices is actually enough to saw my brain in half, and this is coming from a person who is a most natural stand-in for Mary Poppins. When I was young, I never anticipated that I wouldn’t have children, but I guess assuming that I would have them wasn’t any more accurate. So now, me and my uterus hover indefinitely over my bewildering biological clock until it stops ticking. And in the mean time, I fly home to see my family: my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and my adorable niece and nephew. 

The flight attendant returned with the snacks my temporary children had requested.
-Excuse me. I’m a boy- Window Seat said.
I braced myself as the flight attendant who looked like a wannabe NFL fullback who became a flight attendant because he lost a dare, paused to respond. In a word, I was dubious.
-Are you?- he asked while clutching two bags of pretzels.
-Yes- responded Window Seat. 
-Well, that’s what I get for calling you both girls- and my soul let out a sigh of relief.

Next, I handed them both a half sheet of my very special journal paper and each a pen: “Here, write a letter to your family.”
“What should I write?” asked the younger girl, Middle Seat.
“Well.. write how much you have missed them and what you remember from the last time you saw them and what you’ve learned in school.” 
And, while I was being super cool and super nice, I was definitely snooping. This was the easiest way for me to pry without prying. 
Window Seat (the 10 year-old boy) had already told me who his dad was: New York’s next up-and-coming a fashion designer from El Paso. I googled it when we were still on the ground. It was true.
“How do you spell ‘Christmas’?” Middle Seat asked. I immediately thought of her teacher as I spelled to her.  
“Wow, your handwriting is really neat and easy to read!” I praised. I immediately liked her teacher. 

But I did learn from this very school-like activity (as Window Seat popped more Airheads into his mouth by the demi-dozen while I assisted Middle Seat in adding three packets of sugar and exactly three more half-and-halfs into her coffee) that both of these children, who were not in fact related or connected to one another at all except for the first leg from El Paso to Phoenix, did have something in common. They were both going to visit their moms for winter break. 

I felt this urge to nurture these children as much as I could, and I know that it is not my job to love stranger children, or even to take on the responsibility of opening their sugar packets for them.
But with the minutes stacking taller in the air, the pleasant time we were all having began to fall off the rails as we soared over Texas en route to Georgia. I never knew how small an airplane tray was until I watched a 9-year-old try to bend below it to pick up the sugar packets on the floor with a too full cup of coffee resting atop it. Next, I watched Window Seat try to push himself under the tray to pick up his fallen sugar packets, and I realized that parenting must at least be 50% preventing spills and the other 50% cleaning them up. These kids were 10 and 8, I thought we would be past the “spilling liquids” age. I was wrong. The thought horrified me. I thought of my niece and nephew, 4 and 2. And they’re still spilling stuff 6 years later?! How long are parents cleaning up messages? Decades? Then Middle Seat rested her head on my shoulder.

But I can’t tell you a timeline of events for the rest of the flight as my two temporary dependents became more jittery and restless with each sugary, caffeinated moment of confinement, empty sugar packets raining on the floor despite my best attempts. Why do kids have to pee so much? But I can tell you that there were many moments, like when Window Seat kept whining “They’re mad at me” every time a flight attendant, or myself, set a boundary, that I thought “This is why I don’t have children.” By the last hour, in spite of the seatbelt light being undeniably on, they had to keep getting up to go to the bathroom. I kept pointing to the seatbelt sign and instructing “We can’t get up right now because the pilot says it’s dangerous” to no avail. No matter how many times I told Luis in 3rd period to write his name on his paper, I always found one paper in the bin without a name. 

The quiet thought seeped in: this is what I thought teaching would be. No, I didn’t think it would be cleaning up sugar packets or telling children not to pee (turns out, the second part is something I do every day as a teacher), but I did think I would get to nurture young people. I held this idea up to the reality: that many days I am answering parent emails, sitting in bureaucratic meetings to check a box and sign my name, to stand in front of apathetic, tired faces who only light up at the mention of TikTok while I teach passionately and take risks for some of them not to learn a word in Spanish. 

And the truth is, after I came back from Fall Break (“it must be so nice to have all the breaks” say non-teachers), a depression seeped up and bit me in the nalgas. I wondered if it was my choice to alter my hormones in the name of birth control, I thought about if that might be why I was suddenly too sad to function when the sun started to hang low in the sky even before I made it to the gym after the school day. It seems that a negative thought sparked a forest fire, but instead of that being a bad day, it just kept burning like one of those emails in your drafts folder that sends and loops back into your draft folder, even if you’ve sent it, or deleted it, again and again. It’s just perpetually sending.

I wasn’t at harm to myself when I stepped onto that plane.
I just wished, often, that I were. And that was a scary difference from my previous soirees with Depression (I spell it with a capital D).

Sometimes I wondered why I was not at risk to myself, and the best answer I could find was that I did not like physical pain. Pain, not the kind that I seemed to be wallowing in at the moment, but the kind that came from objects, forces outside of myself, that kind was not, and has never been, my friend. But Depression had befriended me in many a lonely chapter when everything else went, and the rest of the pantry staples for comfort had worn thin.

The truth was, I could make a child laugh, or feel safe, or spell out a difficult world like Christmas, but I couldn’t heal or help my inner child. And, if I’m honest, I picked teaching as a career in the event that none of my personal goals come true (marriage… being a parent). If I don’t have a husband, at least I’d be a part of a school community. What was I thinking? 

Suffice it to say, helping a child on an airplane for a handful of jittery hours is only long enough for me to remember that feeling, that moment when you could have a positive influence on a child was what I thought teaching would be like. And I had enough time in the air to wonder why teaching didn’t feel more like helping a child. I didn’t have an answer. And I didn’t have a solution. But I did know that I did not regret sitting by them on the plane. 

When we stepped off the plane, Window Seat had prepared me with a bunch of secrets to surprise his older brother. “Is your birthday March 7th, and are you 17? And is your name Jay?” like I was playing fortune teller again. The Bro flight attendant asked my name to introduce me to Window Seat’s Mom. “Oh thank you so much” she cooed. “Oh, that’s so sweet” she bubbled. I quickly waved goodbye and left the gate. Despite it all, we had all made it safely, safely enough. And that had to be enough.