The Ballerina

I boarded my connecting flight late on purpose. It had already been a long travel day, and I dreaded another two hours on a crowded plane. As I made my way toward the one vacant seat in back of the aircraft, I could see a frazzled, older woman standing in the aisle. She clutched a maroon tweed carry-on bag that was not going to fit under the seat no matter how hard she wrestled with it.
“Oh dear.  I thought this would work. What was I thinking?” Mumble, mumble. “No room in the overhead.”  More mumbling. “Gosh darn it.”
Her words, squeaked though the air as passengers all around pretended not to notice. Flustered, she looked past me toward the flight attendant who was motioning for her to bring the bag to the front of the plane so it could be checked. There was something about her exaggerated movements that didn’t feel right. Something was left of center. I didn’t have to look up at the seat numbers to know that I would be her lucky seat mate.
I stood to the side as she bustled past me, nervous and sweating, in her sea foam sweat suit worn thin by too many washings. I scanned the plane for another empty seat as I was in anot willing to converse with weirdos mood.  Unfortunately, the plane was full, so I pretended to check and recheck my things in the overhead until she returned and plopped into the window seat, exhaling loudly.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Nothing to worry about.” I wasn’t sure why she was apologizing.
“I don’t fly often,” her doe-brown eyes were magnified by the lenses of her glasses. Light brown curls framed her face.
“Hmmm,” I murmured as I pulled the flight card from the seat pocket and pretended to search for overwing exits. I was too tired to encourage her.  I wanted to take off, fall asleep, and wake up in Austin.
She buckled her seat belt and sat upright, her beige leather purse perched on her knees. “Do you?”
“Do I what?” I asked.
“Do you fly often?”
“I guess so.”
“For your job?”
“At times.”
“I am going to see some relatives.”
“That’s good.”  I could see that my short answers were not deterring her.
She continued to pepper me with questions while she took a small brush from her handbag and began to brush her hair. I hate it when people groom themselves on airplanes. I hoped she did not pull out some nail clippers next.
“Don’t worry, I’m not the type that will talk your ear off on the flight,” she said as she brushed the back of her hair with sudden intensity.
“I didn’t think so,” I said as I gave her my best fake, yet friendly smile. I put my head back and closed my eyes. I had a big day tomorrow.  Media training.
A few minutes later the plane accelerated down the runway and lifted into the air. We both glanced out the window as the ground shrank below us. Her hands wrapped around the handles of her purse. A deep breath. She began to hum.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher, eighth grade. And a writer. You?”
“Oh, I don’t work.  Not anymore. I stopped before… How old are you?”
How old am I? Like that’s a normal thing to ask a stranger.
“Older than I want to admit,” I fake laughed. I pulled a novel from my bag and began to read. I would nip this in the bud right here.
She opened her purse and pulled out a Zip-Lock Bag of candy. She unwrapped a few Hershey Kisses and smacked her lips as she enjoyed them.  It was sort of making me queasy, all of these mouth noises and finger wiping. From the corner of my eye I saw her carefully, almost reverently, remove a photo from her purse. She slid it across my tray table.
“She was thirty-seven.”
Was.
A lovely ballerina stared up at me from the photo.  I picked it up and my heart wobbled.
“She was a serious dancer.”
Was.
“She’s beautiful,” I said as I studied her poised on the tips of her satin toe shoes, auburn hair pulled taunt into a bun.
“You would have loved her,” the woman added as she touched my arm. “She taught extreme sports in the off season.  Anything to pay the bills. Spirit.  That’s what she was known for. People loved her spirit. Filled the room.”
I slid the photo back in her direction and looked into her wounded, magnified eyes, expecting tears.  There were none, just the far away cast that said she was remembering. My insides ached as I realized what was happening.
Of course I didn’t recognize right away what made her different.  How could I when my own daughter was safe and happy. Grief can rearrange a person. The weight of sorrow can pull anyone left of center.
Shame crept in. I had to stop judging people so quickly. “I have a feeling we would have been good friends,” I said.
“It’s been three years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Breast cancer.”
“Awful.”
“Now, I told you.  I’m not one of those types to talk your ear off.” She proceeded to tell me all of the disturbing details.
We settled into our respective silences.  I could concentrate on my novel about as well as she could concentrate on the prayer cards she kept pulling from her purse. How does a mother let go of her baby girl?  I prayed with all of my might that I would never have to find out. After awhile she pulled out a carefully folded newspaper clipping and slid it across the tray table. “Since you’re a writer. You’ll appreciate this.”
I unfolded the paper and proceeded to read a lovely tribute to her daughter, indeed an established dancer in Los Angeles.  The same photo she had handed me earlier adorned the piece.
“This is wonderful.”
“We couldn’t afford a proper obituary by the end.  All of our money was gone. The church supported us through so much of it…but her friend, John, he knew the writer.”
She took the clipping and carefully replaced it.  A few more Hershey Kisses disappeared.
“You know.  The worst day…”
I braced myself.  I was not the strongest when it came to emotional pain.
“…was the day she lost her arabesque.”
Her arabesque? What about her breasts? What about the day she lost her life?
“That was the day we looked at each other and knew.”
“I am lost for words,” I said, my eyes watering.
“A dancer needs her arabesque.”
We nodded at each other. A nod between mothers paints far more than a thousand words. We settled again into a comfortable silence.  She watched the fiery sunset through the clouds, and I watched her watching it.
“I hope I can be the kind of mother you’ve been,” I said to her as we landed. “Your sharing this with me gave her one more performance.”
“What do you mean?” her eyes lit up like I was the director of the Joffrey Ballet Company.
“Your sweet ballerina danced right into my heart. And when a writer says this, it means that one day, she will dance across a page… and into readers’ hearts forever.”
We looked at each other a long moment, and she blinked back tears. Then she stood with her purse. “She had a spirit, you know? The kind of of spirit that would fill a room.”