Work and Other Things

Honestly, work as a flight attendant is fun. 99.9 % of fun. But once in a while you get a tour that will make you crawl home on all fours when it is finally over.

Say, you recieve your work schedule and you look at this particular tour. You are not too happy with the overnights, they are not in a city you - or anybody else - really wants to go to, but, oh well, you' ll manage. Then you realize that you will be gone for four days, over the 4. July weekend and husband is gone at the same time. On another continent.

Now, you start panicking a bit. You call your mother and beg her to stay with the kids. Then you start writing long, long lists for every day you will be gone. You tape them on the kitchen door. You will write little notes like "don't forget your key" or "did you do your homework yet?" and distribute them through out the house. You hope that nobody will come by for a visit. 

You will look at the weather forecast and pick clothes for daughter to wear to school. You make little piles in her room with clothes for four days. You will put little notes on top of each pile that look like this: THURSDAY, don't forget to put on sunscreen lotion! 

You make sure there is underwear and socks in every pile because while your daughter is totally capable of dressing herself, she will lose that ability on the days you are gone. 

Having a closer look at your flights you notice that for 4 days you will have to get up very, very early. 4 am early. 

This tour is starting to annoy you. 

At the airport you run into one of your favorite colleagues who tells you happily that you will go on this trip together. You are wondering if maybe the next 4 days won't be so bad after all. When you meet the third crew member your hopes are squished again. 

There are up to 4 flights a day and of course, on that tour, those are exhausting flights. The heat and the summer vacationers with too much luggage are getting to you. The planes are full, every seat is taken and while on the ground, the air is humid and stuffy. You hope your make-up is not running down your face.

And then the ground crew hands you over a boy, travelling alone. He is coming from a long distance flight and his face is pale with fatigue. He reminds you of your son, both are about the same age. You ask him for his name, bring him a pillow and tell him to push the call button above his head if he needs anything else. He is painfully shy and so overtired that by the time you check on him again he is deep asleep. After landing, when handing him over to the ground personel, you touch his skinny shoulders and wish him a good summer vacation with his grandparents. 

On another flight there is lovely older lady with a walking stick. She was brought onto the plane by paramedics and clearly has trouble walking. At one point during the service your colleague, the nice one, notices that the lady is trying to get out of her seat, without success. She rushes to her and then motions you to come there, too. You each hold her under an arm and lift her up. When she is finally standing you see that tears are running down her face. She is embarrassed about needing help. 

Now, normally you or your colleague would crack a little joke to make light of the situation but you can't seem to do that on this flight. To your horror you realize that you are starting to cry right along with the passenger and so is the other flight attendant. Your make-up is now definitely running down your face.

You hold little babies while their mothers use the restroom. You warm up baby food. You manage to find an English newspaper. And then a German one. And a Bulgarian. And every single flight is full.

Later in the hotel you sit on the bed and call home. You listen to detailed stories about missing socks and soccer games and annoying teachers and you don't even care that that phone call will cost you a small furtune. 

 

On the fourth day, during the fourth and last flight you start getting all giggly because you are so exhited about coming home. You look at your colleague and she also, has a big grin on her face. 

At home you are greeted with lots of hugs. You make sure you hug the skinny shoulders of son twice, no, three times while daughter tells you that she did everything, absolutely everything you asked her to do on the lists. 

You look at your work schedule to see where you will be going next. It looks good!

It looks like one of those 99.9 % fun times. 

At least you hope so.