Tears on a Plane

Written yesterday evening:

This is probably not the time to make a serious life decision.

I am on my way home from Atlanta, having spent another few intense hours in conversation with a man, now my friend, whom I briefly dated twenty-one years ago and with whom I became reacquainted at a college event last fall. Among other things, we spoke of life dreams, and my uncertainty about whether I will or should have a child of my own. This still-strikingly handsome man from my past asked the kinds of questions that got me talking about that, but I couldn’t tell what he thought about my answers.

We are not romantically involved, he and I, nor do I expect we will be. He is the kind of man who deserves a wife of the "genuine trophy" (inside and out) variety. But I care about what he thinks.

I am now sitting on the aisle on this American Airlines flight. Across the aisle, one row up, sits a middle-school aged girl with very blonde long hair. On my side of the aisle, one row up from her, sits a little boy, probably around two years old (I am not good at judging these things). A few minutes ago, the boy extended his arm toward the girl, with his small white sock with blue stripes covering his hand like a sock puppet. She reached out and grasped his outstretched, sock-covered fingers, and they gently see-sawed back and forth for a few moments. They appear to be strangers.

Watching this, I realized with as much certainty as I have ever had regarding anything, that I really want to have a son of my own. That is when I started to cry.