On my Way to Denver

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In Italian even the word impatient sounds romantic, impaciento. This is what my nanny called me, while my twin sister, inevitably, was the patient one. I am old enough now to know I have suffered under the spells of certain personality traits, or defects as they call them in AA, impatience, impulsiveness and over-imbibing could be said to have taken their toll, but, as a left leaning Californian with ample self improvement opportunities, I’m working on it.

My trip to Colorado was going to be a long one and how better to practice patience than a ten hour trip? I had a forty five minute wait to board and then about four hours ahead in the air, three at DAX and then another sixty minute flight and a 45 minute drive up the mountain and I’d be breathing fresh air at 10,000 feet. I exhaled slowly to push away my anxiety of being trapped, and I pulled out my iPhone. I downloaded ten hours worth of PodCasts: Spanish Obsessed, Hidden Brain, Awareness Explorers with Jonathan Robinson, Making Sense.

It was 5:00pm when we landed in Denver. The flight had been delayed, but it was of little consequence as it merely shortened the three hour layover to two. I watched the passengers deplane as I stood at the gate considering if studying Spanish or reading my book would hold more sway than the lure of an airport bar.

The last passenger to exit was carrying a baby and juggling a backpack and stroller.

“I don’t know why they always put us at the back of the train, Lu,” she was saying to her baby. The baby was blonde, like her mother, though her mother’s hair was streaked with purple and her starchy chin-length hair jutted out from dark roots, which could have been died that way, this being a look that clearly complemented the black army boots with silver sparkles that caught the light more than you think they would.

The baby looked to be about a year old and her eyes were bright and inquisitive. She gazed at her mother, seemingly quite at ease with the load her mother continued to shift around her slight weight (was she much over a hundred pounds?). She lowered the jet black round sunglasses from the top of her head to conceal her eyes as she walked by. I could see the emboldened outline of a woman- goddess perhaps- on her shoulder, a flower halo winding ink all the way down this young woman’s arm terminating at her delicate wrist ringed with ebullient floral life. I turned away, having realized I was staring.

My stomach was a little funny and so for once the bar lost to the book and I found myself a row of chairs facing one of the runways and I settled into my story about two migrants from Syria. Gunnison was a brief 40 minute flight- once in the air, but getting into the air proved tricky. Ten minutes before departure, later than the proposed boarding time, a flight attendant announced a 40 minute delay. I inquired about it, knowing that the plane had come in from Duluth some two hours earlier. She explained that there had been some confusion and the plane had simply not been brought to the gate. They were bringing it over right now, she assured us. Thirty minutes later, we boarded, greeted by the pilot who assured us that it was a short flight, and there was nothing to worry about. We'd come into Gunnison a little after 9pm. I buckled in, clicked play, reclined my seat the full inch and a half that the seat allows, and closed my eyes.

“You can change your story and your happiness,'' the host of the Awareness Explorers podcast assured me. “There are only a few stories,” he was saying, “and once you know that you can turn it around. Most everything we think is right or wrong is based on a story about being seen as better or getting ahead in some way.” I settled in and watched the clouds rolling below us. The flight was turbulent, but I was coping well. “The mind isn’t very creative, it wants to come up with the same thing, but you can turn it around.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’ll have you on the ground in about fifteen minutes. We appreciate your patience tonight. The temperature in Gunnison……” I shifted my attention back to the show. The host was talking about life happening, neutrally. “It’s the story we tell ourselves about the ‘what is’ about what is happening which causes our suffering.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” a crackling loudspeaker interrupted my zen moment. “I’m sorry but we are headed back to Denver,” a collective grunt echoed in the cabin, followed by a heavy sigh burying us, resigned to our fate like fallen soldiers. We were numbed by the fact initially, understanding the implications for the night only by degrees.

Back to Denver? Where I’d landed over five hours ago? My friend would be waiting for me and she was a solid five hours away from Denver. It was already after ten.

Grim and tired, and shaken by this change of plans we arrived, for a second time, in Denver. If you know DAX, you know it is miles from anything that can be even remotely accused of being Denver. “Customer Service is at Gate B39, but there’s a long line, “ an agent was warning a small crowd of passengers each beginning to absorb the need for a hotel room for the night, new arrangements for their transfer over the mountain.

Passengers started to head off to Gate B39 for more help. Others started talking to each other about strategies, hotels, baggage and shuttles. The line at customer service had already grown long by the time I left the decoy agent and headed over to the other side of the concourse.

“Are you going to put us up in a hotel room?” Other voices echoed approval of the question, hoping the angriest, boldest and more assertive person in the crowd would obtain some help from United Airlines, a company seeming very ununited at the moment.

“No one is getting a hotel voucher,” the tall woman, clad in the official blue vest, name tag pinned to her chest announcing her as the deputy, and we of no import when it came to upholding the job of disappointing disagreeable personages. I added myself to the line and turned up the volume on my Podcast. “What was my story in this moment?”

The line wound around temporary posts and to my surprise I saw the young mother with the goddess tattoo wrapped around her arm was up ahead. The baby was in the stroller and she was talking on her cell, loudly. I was annoyed. This entire trip had been nothing but delays and there was no reason that we should have taken off an hour late from Denver except that United had failed to check the plane out in time for the scheduled flight. I felt the blood rise in my chest. The United app on my phone had told me the plane had arrived hours earlier, why were they just bringing it to the gate and checking it when it was time to board.

“This is bullshit, I’m not gonna stand for this crap,” she was on the phone, but her voice was like a loudspeaker. I wondered what the baby thought. I sighed and considered my budget. I really hadn’t budgeted a two hundred dollar hotel bill.

Then mother and child approached the counter. The thing about having tats all the way up one arm, a miniskirt and black (albeit sparkly) army boots, a tartan cap and impenetrable black John Lennon sunglasses is, well you just don’t blend in. I saw Wanda, our friendly skies representative who definitely wasn’t looking all that friendly, stiffen as the child dressed as a gothic and presumably hurled, unprepared into motherhood walked up the the counter.

“I need a hotel.”

“What’s your name please?”

“Ellie Smith. And Lucy,” she said, her voice trailing off as she shifted the baby to the other hip.

“Speak up ma’am. I can’t hear you through the glass,” Wanda said, without recognition that the glass which separated them was merely representational of the hearing that United clearly didn’t want its reps to do - the glass itself being plexiglass hung from wires from the ceiling so that the two foot square, inch thick medium would inevitably be positioned between a customer’s face and the scowl of the rep, whose job it was to disabuse the passenger of any thought of “rights” when traveling with United Airlines.

“I need a hotel,” she repeated in a voice both weary and also one of warning, of the potential to awaken a mother bear. “We’ve been traveling all day. We have been in Denver since 5pm. I just need to sleep and feed my baby. Please,” I thought she might cry then. ”Please can you give me a voucher for a hotel room?”

“No one is getting a hotel voucher,” Wanda said, her shoulders drawing back reminded me of a pterodactyl. She pitched her eyebrows and chin up and drew her fists to her waist. “You need to make your own arrangements.”

In that instant, I knew, everyone witnessing knew, that a threat had been made, a gauntlet thrown and the mama bear, or perhaps this being Colorado, the wolf, had been awakened.

“The fuck I will,” I heard the curse word and flinched, not out of any prurient latency, but on behalf of the baby who I could see was now standing up in her stroller, watching, hearing, connecting with the intensity of her mother, shouting at a woman twice her size while a crowd of people watched. “I have a baby and I need a room -please!”

“I don’t care what you are, you will watch your mouth. I won’t listen to this…”

“I need a hotel room, and you’re going to get me one. I was on the plane for hours! I was here for hours, I could have driven to Gunnison and back by now. I fucking need to put my baby to bed!”

Their voices were escalating and it was as if they were in a two-person play, the other passengers in line watching, aghast, as the villain and the waif go head to head.

“This was weather related, Ma’am.” Wanda made an effort to collect herself.

“I don’t care what it was, I need a goddamn hotel room!”

“Listen, Ma’am,” Wanda spat as she said it. I couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or not. I turned up the volume on my podcast. The host was still making the point that when we are annoyed, fearful or regretful, we are in a story. What was I annoyed with? What was I responding to that was making my experience, right now as I waited to learn where I might go and what it would cost? Why was I bothered by this young mother with a sleeve of tats confronting this agent?

“Ma’am, I must ask you to move along,” another rep, presumably a manager, had arrived as backup. The two reps at other windows were repeating the same things to the customers who were now accepting their fate, an airport map and list of hotels. No vouchers, no compensation, no apologies.

“Here is a map of the airport and the shuttle stops,” he said, eyes cast on the baby, the mother now crumpled over the stroller. “I have booked you on a flight tomorrow afternoon, '' he said in a manner so resigned, so beyond his power to control, and added, “If you cannot afford a hotel room, I can offer you a pillow and a blanket.

“You are goddamn kidding me!” This was a calamity, both women now red, indignant, worlds apart. “You have to get me a hotel room,” then she crumpled. The baby was wide eyed, unperturbed, gazing between her mother and the strangers who seemed to be causing this reaction in her mother, one which I imagined she had seen before given her unflappability.

Wanda reappeared with an expression of victory. She shoved two flat pillows with no cases and a blanket that looked like a Vietnam era government issue, at mother and child.

Then this tough-as-nails, exhausted mother’s shoulders slumped, her knees wobbled and I think she started to cry. The baby pitched herself up in the stroller again, looked at her mother and sat down to work the edges of her blanket.

“Most of us get caught up in the story of the problem with the way it is now,” the host of Awareness Explorers, was explaining. “Probably there is nothing really wrong right now. There are situations and circumstances that require a response. And sometimes the possible response is limited to two or more choices which are less than optimum, but adding a story of ‘why is this happening’ or ‘life’s not fair,’ is only adding additional burden.”

I walked away from the counter watching the manager who had been called to the situation lead the duo to a rack of chairs just beyond the line of still waiting passengers. I stood there, waiting, mesmerized by the show and listening to Ellie who seemed to be crying a bit to someone on the phone, but alternating between that tone and a few angry expletives.

Then I felt it, a rush of anger whooshed suddenly and unexpectedly from toes to head and then aggregated in my chest, pounding as if I had to be the one to let it out. What story was this? Empowerment. I was feeling the edge of what I could help turn around. I was going to have to get a hotel room myself. I didn’t want the expense, but I wasn’t going to sleep in the airport and now they were saying the next flight was in 48 hours. Blood rushed to my head: ‘It’s my turn, it’s my job, to help this small family in crisis.’ The thought took me, swept me up and straight toward these two bedraggled girls.

“Don’t worry sweety,” I said, reaching out my hand to lightly touch her shoulder. “I’m going to be your angel tonight,” I heard myself saying, unplanned. “We can share a room, and we’ll make sure we can get your baby fed and bathed and to sleep.” As soon as the word ‘sleep’ left my mouth, my legs faltered a little beneath me and a sudden fear lurched into my parched throat and the seemingly angry boulder in my stomach sank. What was I saying? What was I signing up for? I didn’t know anything about this young woman, save her colorful vocabulary.

“We’ll work it out, I’m going to make sure you have a room tonight,” I said without betraying my doubt - I hoped. “But hang here a minute, I’m going to give the manager a piece of my mind and make him give you a hotel room -- if I can.” I was saying this outloud while another voice was yelling at me, you idiot, you’re so impulsive! What have you done?

I walked back toward the gate. This was not shaping up well. I had no idea how I was going to get to Crested Butte, had no desire to spend two of my four day trip in Denver, was now charging myself with another two people, whom I didn’t know At all! And I didn’t even know what hotel rooms would cost or what would be available at midnight in Denver.

I glanced around listening to the listless tone of the ticket agents repeating their lines to the remaining travelers, “I’m sorry, we have no vouchers. This was weather related and unavoidable.” The travelers, looking more and more worn down walked away either despondent or in various degrees of anger, it wasn’t hard to say which given their countenance. I saw the manager peek his head out from behind the little side room as I approached. He saw me and his head popped back around the corner like an ostrich avoiding sight of the oncoming predator.

“Miguel, I called out. “Hello?” He walked toward me slowly. “Miguel, you can’t leave a mother and her child to sleep in the airport. Surely that is not the policy of United?”

“Normally we would be able to do something, but in this case the passenger was nearly violent with the staff and we cannot abide this kind of behavior,” he said, dropping his chin, looking even more diminutive behind the gray desk.

“Well that’s not the baby’s fault,” I quipped. “You cannot punish the baby for the sins of the mother.” Miguel was shaking his head, looking at the ground. He wasn’t as good at denying passengers their requests as his staff.

I reached into my purse and pulled out my wallet, gauging his response. Miguel, I guessed, was not born in America. “Miguel,” I said in a tight, authoritarian voice, “look, one of us needs to get her a hotel room. If I can make this better for you, you can make it better for me,” I said, clicking the wallet open and shut.

“Yes, ma’am,” wow did his tone change fast! In fact, I believe that the manager of the hotel has just left a message to let me know if there was room in the hotel,” he said this eagerly, as if hoping I would follow the lead and understand the non verbal conversation we were having.

“Great news,” I said and pulled two twenty dollar bills out of my wallet. “I’ll just go check on the baby,” I said coolly, as though bribery were second nature to me, as if I had really thought this through. I turned and looked over my shoulder as I walked away, “ I’ll be waiting right out here,” I added, suppressing a smile. Feeling triumphant and excited by the possibility, I headed back to Ellie whose expression had changed from growl to grin.

“Hey, I think I worked something out with them,” I said as she lifted Lucy from the stroller to toss her lightly in the air.

“My mother in law got me a hotel. It’s okay. And I think I have a friend who can come and pick me up at the airport and take me there.”

“Wow! Wow that’s great Ellie.” Suddenly tired and alone, abandonment rising up from my feet, I shifted the weight of my carry-on bag which had been seemingly growing heavier as the night grew longer.

“Okay, so…” I wasn’t sure where to go next, my angelhood being suddenly revoked. Wanda was walking toward us - voucher in hand. I wondered if I could use it -after all I had invested forty bucks.

“Ma’am,” she said to Ellie, her eyebrows cocked and the corners of her mouth drawn into a frown. “We were able to find you some help with a...”

“I don’t need it. Take it,” Ellie said, turning her back on Wanda. Wanda and I paused a moment too long, neither sure how to proceed. Wanda stepped back.

“Well, what hotel is it? Where is it?” I asked.

“Gina got me a room at the Embassy. I don’t need it.”

“Fine. Suit yourself,''Wanda said more to me than to Ellie whose attention was on Lucy who was hugging her blanket fiercely. I wanted to take the voucher myself, now having no plan as to where to go and forty dollars lighter. But, it was surely made out in Ellie's name and with instructions that this was for mother and child.

“Well, wow, okay good, great,” I said. “Are you going to take a shuttle? I’ll help you carry your bags.”

“Hey,” she stopped and looked at me. So what are you going to do?” I paused, probably blushed - “from hero to zero,” I thought.

“I mean, you can stay with us if you want.”

I felt a rush of appreciation for the kindness offered, the trust, the willingness to share. I nodded, a bit choked up, she buckled the baby in. I wondered if she was now having the same second thoughts, should she trust me, a stranger? I smiled, content with the experience of a merciful stranger, good intentions and the humor of it all. This was sure some kind of a story.

“So you’re going to be my angel, are you?” She and Lucy each looked up at me and for a moment, the three of us just stood wide-eyed.

Then we laughed as loud as we had howled. "Those angels really worked overtime on this one!"

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Denver at Midnight
Denver at Midnight

Don't Judge
A book by its cover