Community of Strangers

Seat 34C welcomed me stiffly with a packaged blanket and cracker crumbs engrained into the cushion. I slid my worn messenger bag under the seat in front of me and pinched off a piece of watermelon gum to placate my nerves. In Chinese, the air stewardess announced, I assume, that this flight was heading from Nanjing to Hong Kong.

Two women were seated next to me, comfortably chatting to each other. They looked matronly, but all older women look like mothers when you’re seventeen and haven’t been home in three months. My adventure was waning. I had walked the damp streets of summer and accepted unnamed food from unnamed vendors, drank weak Chinese tea in crowded markets, and had stood in the center of Shanghai with the chatter of foreign languages and steep buildings surrounding me like a modern Babel. Yet my largest act of bravery lay in this- the first flight I would take alone. I wanted to be awake and fully aware of this silent victory. I would hold it over the door of my heart like a souvenir, a gift to myself, daring fear to try enter again.

I smiled to the women and loosened the blanket my mother had tied to my carry-on as I left South Africa, in case I should feel chilly. It still smelled like home. Thirty-two songs later, we landed over the ocean line onto the tarmac. Buckles clipping and zippers almost drowned the stewardess' voice as she gave instruction pertaining to the three shuttles idling outside the plane door. I couldn’t decipher from her broken English what my next step was to be, and the plane was quickly emptying. In my panic, I grasped my ticket between my teeth and fumbled with my blanket. The lady beside me spoke earnestly in Chinese, and I expressed that I didn’t understand. She muttered something, grabbed my blanket in her bony hands, tied it to my bag, and looked at my ticket. She then pointed out the bus I should take with mystifying instructions, staunched the flow of passengers, and pushed me brusquely into the aisle. The bus I had boarded reached the airport before I realized that I would never be able to find and thank this woman, with the only words I knew of her language.
On my final flight home, I watched night clouds reflecting the blinking light of the wing, and considered the reasons that I had left- to find bravery in a lone adventure. My final interactions in the country of my quest encapsulated what I had discovered, the simple truth we carry wherever we go;

No fulfilling journey is ever achieved truly alone.