Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal

Someone recently shared this on the women's poetry listserve I'm on. I had to share it too--


The poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote up this Albuquerque Airport experience and sent to exactly two friends, who passed it on to friends, who passed it on and on . . .


Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal

by Naomi Shihab Nye



After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement:

If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,please come

to the gate immediately.



Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my

grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the

flight service person. Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the

flight was going to be four hours late and she did this.



I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu-

biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, sho bit se-wee? The

minute she heard any words she knew -- however poorly used - she stopped

crying. She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed

to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the following day. I

said no, no, we're fine, you'll get there, just late, who is picking you

up? Let's call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him

in English.



I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and

would ride next to her -- Southwest.



She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and

found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for

the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them

chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by

then. Telling about her life. Answering questions.



She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered

sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag --

and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not

a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from

Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from Laredo --

we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There are

no better cookies.



And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers --

non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our flight, one

African-American, one Mexican-American -- ran around serving us all

apple juice and lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar, too.



And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were holding hands -- had

a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green

furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a

plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.



And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this

is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in

this gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped -- has seemed apprehensive

about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those

other women, too. This can still happen, anywhere.



Not everything is lost.

Money Changes Everything -Extravagant Purchases

I just finished an incredible book, which I will write about soon, but I want to write about a new anthology on money I began reading--Money Changes Everything--which is a book of essays by writers about well, money and their relationship with it.

The first essay I read was by the now well-off author of the Lemony Snicket books, Daniel Handler. He decided to take the $1200 he was going to be paid for his essay and use it to buy a $1200 bottle of wine. The question being--is buying a $1200 bottle of wine immoral...and also, what does a $1200 bottle of wine taste like (seems it tastes pretty much like regular wine).

Daniel has a personable dry-humor voice that works well for this piece. He's honest in telling us that he was broke once and now, he's far from broke--think the Jim Carrey movie--yep, not even close. As his agent said to him, "The money train is pulling into your station" and it did.

And though it's completely a way to get new material, I enjoyed his experiment of buying this $1200 bottle of wine and inviting his poorest friends over to drink it with him. And when his poor friends didn't think it was immoral of him purchasing a $1200 bottle of wine, he said, "So you would purchase a $1200 bottle of wine," and they said "Never! But we're fine with you using your money to buy it."

What it made me think of are these odd purchases in our lives, the extravagant moments when we throw money at something we think we want, or do want and if we feel regret afterward or if we are still to this day thrilled with our purchase.

When I 29, I was at an antique shop and saw an old stained glass heavy wooden door from England. I asked my husband "Do you think that would fit in between the laundry room and the kitchen?" He said yes, not knowing what it cost. Great! I said, can that be my anniversary gift? Sure, he said. I paid $400 for that door I never measured, never flinched at the price or tried to bargain down. Five minutes later I was the owner of a hundred year old door that may or may not fit in my house.


Since then, that door (which did fit) has given me much writing material, photo opportunities in front of it, and just plain happiness as I look at it with the vinyl "6" I placed on top to represent our anniversary. If/when I leave this house, that door is coming with me, it could go on to a new life as a tabletop or interesting wall decoration. But maybe what it brought me was the realization that my spontaneous, my decisions from the heart have always been my best decisions. Every day it is a reminder that when I see something I want, I should act and trust more in my gut than my head.


* * *

What is the craziest thing you have every purchased? Do you regret it or not?

What's your most spontaneous purchase? Tell me, I'm interested.