Be Carried, My Dear
Walking through the airport terminal, there’s the piped-in smell of buttery cinnamon pretzels, long lines in front of coffee vendors that block foot traffic, and everywhere the noise of waiting. It’s liminal space at its finest.
Navigating an airport is an exercise in dichotomy: either you need to be at your specific destination right now (really, should have been there 10 minutes ago so rush rush) or you’re wandering until you need to be at that specific destination. On this day I was a wanderer, looping the length of the terminal in order to fill the forty minutes until I needed to be at Gate A9. Then, I would stand in line in order to stand in another line, in order to sit in my seat, in order to achieve lofty altitude, and stand in line to exit the plane.
In a way, that waiting time is a gift because there are few responsibilities other than navigating yourself to a gate on time. Of course, this doesn’t apply for parents traveling with children - which I have been, and hats off to all of the moms pushing strollers and the dads changing diapers and their haggard attempts to fill time with anything remotely interesting to their offspring.
“But then I felt the prickle that comes from being watched.”
But for me, the luxury of a wandering pace and some intense people-watching were the only goals. I moved at a steady but slow pace, enough that I could juke if necessary when the people in front of me decided they needed to fill the water bottles or buy a $15 beer or try on a new shade of mascara. But also allowing enough space that the hurried people, the ones running to get through the door before it closes, could pass.
It was in this forward but unhurried progression that I found myself behind a woman and her three children. Nothing remarkable about that, there must have been hundreds of configurations of families in that building along with me. In this case, the girls were in various stages of becoming as tall as their mother. I couldn’t tell from behind whether they looked like her yet. But then I felt the prickle that comes from being watched.
The mother was carrying one of her daughters and the girl was looking right through me with sea-green eyes. Freckles stood out in relief on the bridge of her nose, illuminated by our presence in place full of floor-to-ceiling windows. The girl’s brown hair curled around her forehead and face in the way such things do in humid air.
“There are so many times when I would like to be carried. When I would like to stare as though I was a child, be loose and give myself over to being moved.”
She was looking at me but not studying me. She wasn’t watching; her mind was altogether elsewhere. Her sandaled feet dangled past her mother’s hips with the kind of looseness that comes when you can’t hold tense any more.
If I were a judging grandmother-type I would have admonished that mother for carrying a child too old for such things. But I was (an am) not. Instead, I wondered what it would feel like to be carried when I was spent like that. I wondered how it would feel to loosen the muscles in my legs and let them go. To rest my head against a familiar shoulder. To know that I could give my weight entirely to another human. To be moved under the power of someone else. There are so many times when I would like to be carried. When I would like to stare as though I was a child, be loose and give myself over to being moved.
I smiled at the girl and her face didn’t change one bit. It made me smile wider because she wasn’t spending any energy reacting or considering how she should react, only holding herself close to what she needed.
Be carried, my dear. It won’t last much longer, that ability to ask with no more than raised arms to be lifted away from your own weight.
So wrap your arms around her and let go, I thought. Let yourself be carried in whatever way you need.
