Ground Delay

The first horse gallops across my field of vision and I follow his path with my eyes to the left, where he disappears into a gust of sand from off the hilly desert floor. He needed to be somewhere. In a place that was nowhere at all. I couldn’t hear his hooves, since I could only hear the howl of the wind―though muffled, as if my ears were covered. He was brown and majestic. It appeared like he had never worn a saddle, that his mane was not one regularly brushed, and after his fleeting appearance―he was gone. I continue on, with my feet in the sand, alone in the desert now, looking around occasionally at the storm I am in. Then another horse appears. She glides through my vision’s field just the same. I long to call out to her. She isn’t as afraid as she seems with the way that she runs, she’s just a bit lost. I can’t go to her and she can’t notice me―because she is me.

The girl put down her pen and sighed. Despite working in a role that valued an outgoing personality the girl was quite introverted. Not that she lacked any social skills, she just liked her alone time. She was still mulling her horse dream over in her mind and what it could mean. It had made a strong impression on her, but the situation wasn’t fully cleat yet. Figuring she should probably let it go for now, she looked around and tried to bring herself into her environment. The plane was sitting on the tarmac, forbidden by dispatch from taxiing to the gate until the thunderstorm passed. Feeling guilty for dwelling with her head over her writing, especially while on the job, knowing she should make herself available to her passengers, she closed her little black notebook. Directly across the aisle, sat an old man in the aisle seat with an empty window seat next to him. He looked like a kind man, but he had a gloomy expression on his face as he gazed out the hazy window. Another flash of lightening appeared, and the girl leaned over slightly and said to the man:

“Don’t worry, this delay shouldn’t last too long,” hoping to offer him some reassurance. As though not even startled out of his reverie, the old man grimaced and said, as if more to himself “I’m in no hurry today”. The man ran his fingers over his wrinkled chin, that was roughly textured from a day-old shave and he thought that he didn’t mind terribly being stuck on this plane a little longer. He had already been uprooted from the place he had called home for decades, he wasn’t eager to arrive to this new place with any haste. Pulling himself from his thoughts he looked over to the young flight attendant that had spoken to him. He gave her a polite smile as though apologizing for revealing his true thoughts out loud.

“Is this home for you or are you visiting? She asked.

With a twinge of annoyance stinging his heart, he replied quietly, “Home, now”. Pushing away the ache in his chest, the old man asked a question of his own.

“I saw you writing in that notebook, are you a writer?” He pointed to the little black notebook. He was feeling grateful that his curiosity was pulling him more into conversation and away from his thoughts.

“Oh no,” said the girl, pulling out the notebook of black leather. “This is where I write down my dreams. Nightmares too. I write them all down in as much detail as I can, and then,” hesitating, as she often did before deciding if a person was worthy of hearing her true interests, “and then I try to interpret them.”

The old man listened carefully and considered her words seriously. The girl had a familiar way about her when she spoke.

“I see” he said. “Of all the advancements of humankind, it seems we’ve barely scratched the surface with dreams” the old man noted with sincere puzzlement.

“Yes, exactly and you’d have thought we would have, given that―”

“Given that it’s an experience so inevitable and so frequent, yes.” The man finished her next words. The girl was impressed. This man’s intelligence displayed itself easily but without boasting, it seemed to come from a place of thoughtful and careful consideration of the world’s mysteries. She smiled and was eager to continue.

“I’ve been researching dream interpretation for a while now.”

“You have my attention. So, how do you go about it?” The old man encouraged.

“It’s tricky and it takes a lot of practice. It really comes down to properly identifying symbols. You’ve got to find your own personal meaning for the symbols that appear in your dream.”

As the girl was speaking, in the old man’s mind an image of his late wife appeared. Oftentimes, at the crack of dawn when the alarm would wake them both up, they would dress in the darkness, and his wife would recount her incredible dreams to him with excitement. She would laugh in between yawns at their bizarre contents as she recited them to him. He could still hear the exact sound of that laugh in his memory’s ear.

“This latest dream of mine I’ve not been able to crack yet” said the girl and her shoulders settled in a small defeat, and she had opened the little black notebook and was fluttering through its pages.

“Well let’s see if we can figure it out. You can use me to think out loud.” The man suggested kindly. The rain still poured outside and thunder rumbled and rolled its sound through the cabin.

“Alright” the girl agreed. “So, the major symbols involved in this one are: firstly, the desert,”

The man nodded thoughtfully. “And have you ever been to a desert?”

“No, not like this one. This one was treacherously beautiful, one that could swallow you whole if it wanted to. And it was stormy as well.”

“So you were in danger?”

“Not exactly… I was walking slowly through the storm, sort of untouched by it.”

“So a bit like our predicament right now then”

“Yes, oddly enough” The girl pondered this for a moment, then continued on.

“The next major symbols were these two horses”. The girl saw an expression of great interest deepen in the man’s face, the corner of his mouth pulled slightly upward as if he had just remember an inside joke.

“Do you like horses?”

“Very much” The old man replied. “But I think the question is, what impression of horses do you have?”

“They’ve always fascinated me. I never took riding lesson, I don’t think it would’ve been an affordable hobby for my parents to involve me in.”

“Well, you don’t have to be an equestrian to be moved by horses”. The old man pointed out.

“That’s true” she considered. She conjured up a scene in her head of the one time she did ride a horse on a trail ride, and how much she enjoyed it. “They’re incredible. I feel so much respect for them. They are intelligent and disciplined yet intuitive and free.”

The girl’s praise stirred more memories of the old man’s late wife, who had spoken of most animals in this way. Working as an ethologist in collaboration with universities, his wife had wrestled a predicament her entire career. She had been a disciplined scientist, driven by meticulous curiosity in her work, but at the same time she had always gone on long rants expressing the way in which her job deprived her of something. She found the intangible spirit of animals equally as invigorating, and yet research methods often stifled these aspects or dismissed them. She had longed to study animals in a way that encompassed both approaches. He had heard her explain many times that overt measurements and observations could only tell you so much about a creature. She saw her subjects as characters in all their uniqueness and this, she always pressed, gave her more insight into their true nature.

“I can certainly see you enjoying freedom in a career like this” the old man pointed out, gesturing vaguely to the plane walls that enclosed them.

“A job” the girl corrected him. “Actually, it feels more like a constriction than anything else.” The stuffiness of the narrow metal tube of the fuselage did indeed mirror a feeling she had regarding her role as a flight attendant. “Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of time to read and write here, but funny enough, I don’t feel like I’m going anywhere.”

“What would you prefer to be doing? Where would you prefer to be going?”

“I’m studying psychology part time. It’s fascinating. To me, it’s a discipline with the potential to merge science with the spiritual, in terms of inquiry into, well everything, the world, life, us.”

The old man’s heart briefly warmed for memory of his late wife’s passion, he looked down to his wrinkled hands in attempt to hide the surge of emotion.

“But to do anything significant, you need the credentials, and gaining a degree at a snail’s pace so that you can work to pay for that degree, doesn’t feel very promising. There’s a lot of room for doubt, I’ll say that.”

“I think you may be getting somewhere” the old man smiled a twinkling grin. Momentarily confused, the girl then saw his eyes pointing to the little black notebook that was still opened to the page of her dream. She looked down and ran her fingers over the page, the beginnings of something started to dawn on her.

“Ladies and gentlemen thank you for your patience,” the girl jumped a little, startled by the sudden announcement by the Captain overhead. He continued on to say that they had been cleared to head to the gate.

“You’re right, thinking out loud with someone, was just the thing needed.” The girl said closing her little notebook and placing in on the seat as she stood up and headed down the aisle to check again that passengers were properly seated before the aircraft began to taxi.

As the girl headed up the aisle, the old man’s cellphone rang in his coat pocket.

“Hello”

“Hey Dad. We’re here waiting for you at arrivals, the kids are with us too.”

“Great, I shouldn’t be long”

“So how did the sale go? Two horses and all that equipment, you must’ve gotten a decent sum.”

“It was a good exchange yes, we finalized everything shortly before I left to catch my flight.” Answered the old man as he was removing a newly crisp cheque of twenty thousand dollars from his inner coat pocket. He smoothed the cheque between his fingers and continued to listen to his son’s voice.

“Listen Dad, I spoke to the buyer as well, he has a great reputation and land twice the size that yours was. I think they’re going to be very happy. They’ll have so much space to run. And I’m sure he would let you visit anytime.” He son said this all quickly and nervously, with a twinge of guilt but also hope in his voice.

“I know son. I’m sorry for the things I said to you before. I know you’re just looking out for your old man.” He hung up the phone and sighed. He leaned over the aisle to where the girl had left her little black notebook on the seat. He tucked the cheque into the notebook where the ribbon marked the page of the dream. Tears filled his crinkly eyes, but never spilled over as he fully faced his grief for the first time. A beautiful image came to his eyes; his beloved horses running free in more acres than they had ever seen, and then he thought of his late wife, and hoped she too, was running free somewhere, just the same.