CHAPTER 10 - CHICAGO
The flight from Allentown Pennsylvania to Chicago, if we skip the part about Precious the dog and the Korean gentleman, went well. I arrived about three hours early for my connecting flight to China. While looking without success for the flight listing on a large electronic board, a woman dressed in a flight attendant’s uniform, about forty-five years of age with rich mahogany skin, walked up to the board and searched for her flight as well.
“Do you see the China flight listed yet?” I asked.
“Not yet, sir, but it will be up soon. I’m working that flight. Don’t know what section of the plane yet but look me up when we board.” She said all this with a twinkle in her eye and I could tell that she was someone who enjoyed a good joke.
A few hours later I made my way through the jetport, trying not to feel like part of a cattle herd. I entered the aircraft and a uniformed gentleman pointed down a long aisle indicating my assigned seat. Before I moved very far along, an arm reached out from the galley and gently pulled me into the small curtained room. It was the flight attendant from a few hours earlier.
“I told them all you’re my uncle,” she said with a laugh and a bang of her hand on the stainless steel counter. “We’ll have some fun!”
“Sounds good to me,” I responded as I pictured my reddish complexion being complemented by her mahogany one. I can get sunburn just sitting too close to a reading lamp.
A little later, when the passengers were a little more settled but before takeoff, another flight attendant came by and said, “Oh, you’re Harriet’s uncle. Welcome aboard.”
I was about to ask her who Harriet was when I remembered my conversation in the galley and caught myself, so I said, “Isn’t she a wonderful girl!”
“The best!”
Shortly after that another flight attendant came by and moved me to a window seat with an empty seat between me and the passenger in the aisle seat. Hope he doesn’t have a dog!
“Just let us know if you need anything at all, Doctor O’Neil, and it’s yours. We’ll make sure your vegetarian meals find you even though your seat was changed.”
“Brother Francis” had become my name in my late teen years upon entering religious life, but when I fly on long trips I often have natural medicine with me and sometimes I am in places where being a Catholic Christian monk is not very endearing to others. I never deny my vocation, but put copies of my natural medicine and clinical psychology licenses in my baggage with my medicine so anyone who sees my supplies will be less likely to question them. “Doctor O’Neil” works well too since it is also truly my name.
After about eighteen flying hours, and feeling like I usually do at that point—dirty and tired—we deplaned. As I was leaving, Harriet was busy about her work of helping to bring the plane back into some sort of order. I went up to her and gave her a hug. “Tell the family that we’ve got to get together. We always say that but we never do.”
Harriet loved it, and for a moment, we actually felt like uncle and niece. What a beautiful world it could be… Then again, was she up to something? Why was I thinking like that? She wouldn’t hurt a fly.
It filled me with great joy to have Tian Wu’s cousin Theresa and her friends welcome me outside of baggage claim. Theresa’s hair was more black than silver and she wears it in a short curly perm—a kind of Asian-Afro. Some of her friends have enough money, others have very little. Somehow they managed to get hold of a van and pick me up when I flew in from the United States. They whisked me off to lunch at a beautiful Chinese restaurant. Since night and day were reversed for me now, mainland China being twelve hours ahead of United States time, what I really was interested in was a shower and some down time. Like many cultures, the Chinese people express their hospitality through food. We shared a wonderful meal and I managed not to fall asleep and drop into my egg drop soup.
A quote from the famous Swiss Analyst Carl Jung came to mind as I celebrated life with these wonderful people, “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” Some of the things that happened to these folks were not so good, but it seemed to make them smile all the more--and make them even stronger. Poverty and sickness are never strangers to the people I often find myself associating with both in the States and in China, yet people go on. I marvel at the strength and courage of people who, for any number of reasons, need to apply for disability financial help. I do disability evaluations on a regular basis and marvel at the ability to deal with day to day traumas of those often thought of as disabled.
As we drove to Theresa's house in the van, someone quoted the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu as saying, "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." Because I am a Christian, my master is Jesus. I believe he is God and is within us--and that God is beyond being a he or a she. I cannot help but see echoes of his teaching in the philosophies of many of these wonderful Asian sages. It has been my life's work to rid the world of prejudice in any of its many subtle and sinister forms. Being able to relate freely to people of various cultures and spiritualities has become my greatest joy.
You are probably beginning to grasp the fact that my flights usually involve some sort of unplanned adventure. My plane was late because there was a bit of a riot when I was transferring airplanes in China. My next plane was about four hours late and we were not given updates or explanations as to why. All of a sudden a Chinese gentleman stood up on his chair and began to yell in Mandarin. My Mandarin is far from the best but I understood him to be expressing his anger about not even getting an explanation or an "I'm sorry" from anyone concerning the delay of our airplane. On the other hand, given my Mandarin challenges, he could have simply been excitedly ordering a pizza.
While he was in the process of yelling, a woman stood up and began saying similar things. The next thing I knew, there were several hundred people standing and yelling. The little bit of Mandarin I knew went right out the window in this cacophony of sounds and voices. After about twenty minutes of this a representative of our airline arrived to speak with us. The group wrote down their demands, which included an apology and a discount. During this process a gentle voice came over the public address system announcing that our plane was ready to board. The entire crowd shouted, "No!" They wanted their demands to be met in writing and then they would get on the plane. That is exactly what happened.
During our relatively brief flight several flight attendants came over and apologized for the uproar in the airport. I suppose, being the only Westerner in the crowd, I stuck out a little bit. I smiled and let them know that this sort of thing can happen anywhere. I told them that I was grateful to be among their people and thanked them for their service. I think I practiced some pretty good diplomacy during that flight.
The mystery of how some centuries-old parchments would be waiting for me when we arrived at Theresa's home had been pulling at the corners of my mind for days. Tired as I was, I was still more than excited about getting my hands on these texts--which were purported to be written by the very hands of our founders, St. Jane de Chantal and St. Francis de Sales.