Flight Attendant

There are a lot of specifics I don’t remember.  Where we were living, what stage of our marriage we were in, how many children we had—but really, none of that matters.  What matters is this: we were married with more than one child.  I had moved many times to support our lives together.  I was less than thrilled with my body and had no illusions about my own mortality, aging and/or energy for frivolous things like intimacy.  I hope that paints a picture for you before I share this moment in my life.

I was picking Nick up from some airport somewhere.  It was either PHX or PHL or EWR.  I don’t remember and it wasn’t important.   It had been somewhere between 4 days and 2 weeks since I’d seen him.  Either way, it was a long enough time for me to be exhausted by parenting, housekeeping, working full-time and trying to maintain some kind of sanity.

“How was your trip?” I said after pulling away from the curb.

“It was good.  Happy to be home,” he said, smiling. 

“You seem happy, that’s nice,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I am.”

“What’s up?” I said.

“Well, I had kind of a strange experience.”

“Oh?  What’s that?”

“So, you might think this is kind of weird, but I had this flight attendant on one of my flights and she was really pretty.”

“Oh, ok.”  I said, no thinking much of it.  I’m not the jealous type (mostly because I’m super confident and amazing myself so, you know, what could some other gal have on me?).

“I kept thinking about her.  She just, I don’t know, really struck me as pretty.”

“Ok.” I said, trying not to get annoyed.

“I really couldn’t put my finger on it, you know?  I just found myself thinking about her and looking at her.”

“Ohhh kaaaay,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed or irritated.  Did I need to hear this?  Did I need to sit through this? 

It had been a tough few weeks/days (like I said, I don’t remember).  I’d managed at least 2 kids for at least 4 days of solo parenting while working full time and trying very hard when picking him up to look my best and be pretty on my own.  I put on makeup.  I wore shoes that weren’t for running or lounging.  I put in real effort just to hear about some gorgeous flight attendant.  This was new for us.  He NEVER talked about flight attendants.  Was this a new thing I was going to have to suffer through?

“And then I figured it out,” he said.

“Yeah?”  I was annoyed.  Nothing he said could have made a difference.  I was mentally contacting divorce attorneys.

“She looked exactly like you.”

Oh BS, I thought.  Nice try buddy.  I’m not buying it.

“Yeah?” I said, skeptical.

“Yeah!” he said, excited.  And he pulled up her picture on the company website.

I stared in amazement at my twin.  She could have been my sister, my cousin.  This woman, whose name I’ll never know because he never said it, looked so like me that my husband of many years felt comfortable enough to tell me that he found himself strangely attracted to her…because she looked like me.

Heart oddly full.