And we’re at this part again.

Exit Row. The one right next to the aircraft door. All my stuff is crammed in the overhead spaces early—a small price to pay for Legroom Sweet Legroom over the next seven hours.

Passengers shuffling by and holding tickets as they squint at row numbers. The ritualistic opening and closing of these aircraft doors is surely a lock gate for emotion: I’m coming, I’m going, happy, trepidation, anxiety, peace. We’re a motley manifest that spins into a greater mangled ball of string. In this capacity, none of us are singularly remarkable. We’re all just tired and want to find our seat.

See ya, gatekeeper.

The door shuts and the heart lurches a bit—or maybe it’s just a brief stutter allowed since we’re all adults here. For us, there are far greater tribulations that warrant such a scrunched up emotional response. Out the window, there’s a boy working the jet bridge. He looks like he’s about sixteen. He doesn’t look at me, the first face in this bulkhead picture series, and if he did it wouldn’t matter. I’m just a number—one of many he will vaguely register as we come and go today.  All in a day’s work.

One last look, and the green turns a hue of nostalgia.

I’m trying to remember how in days past this mode of travel was considered downright exotic. People congregated back aft and enjoyed a mid-flight smoke. Movie time was a tiny one-screen show that inexplicably presented Cinema Paradiso. Flying back then was neat- and still it kinda is. But now we’re more like sardines, barreling through the air so that we can get to and from our people.

Smile. You forced me into this view.

Turning and twisting onto the runway, the rising sun shoots a beam through my plate of pressure-resistant acrylic. Ma’am, would you close that? There’s a flight attendant in the jumpseat being blinded just across from me and when did I become a member of the Ma’am variety? Christ. Age must have happened during one of these mindless Atlantic crossings. While I was busy bouncing around.

See Ireland first. Then keep going back.

I try to think of how many times I have been to Ireland, but I don’t think the question makes much sense anymore.

We’re airborne now, heading west from Dublin Bay. I can see it running away from us as I glance out the window just behind me. The holiday is effectively over, yet oddly I feel the sadness shift. The houses are tiny now, but the place still feels near. The Wicklow Mountains. The smell of burning turf. The friends more authentic than any of our borders can define. Nothing is really gone.

Is this why I was called “Ma’am”?

Finally the flight attendant decides that I am permitted to raise my shade. The clouds, thick and billowy, now obscure everything but the building day. I think of what lies on the other side, as well as my bag of trinkets resting securely in the overhead bin. I mentally inventory everything and their soon-to-be recipients: chocolates for Blair’s unwedding, a tea towel for Katie’s birthday, Irish Drinking Socks for Carl, a Guinness mug for some Army Major whose name I never gathered. Soon I will get to see them all again, and the thought of each person, existing somewhere on the other side, makes me smile.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…at least for right now.

Going back and forth between Ireland and America, I kind of wonder how long I can sustain the practice before I go to the poor house. It’s a pointless question, one that won’t serve me now. For the moment, I’ve got some legroom and can rest my head against the window. Bobbing in and out of consciousness, I close out the world and try to get some shut eye. For now I won’t reflect on my future, and instead will fill my drifting thoughts with the faces of people who boost my life. Here and everywhere.