Esther & Bunny Seymour

Stepping onto a Southwest plane requires keeping my ears pricked for what is really happening.  Don't be swept away.  Something amazing is just right here.  Listen.  There's a place for you.  The way the airline structures boarding means that people who

• are ​highly motivated to do their online check-in at the first possible minute,
• are willing to pay more for first dibs on a choice seat, or
• have special needs 

are already sitting down by the time I trundle in.  (I've written previously about an amazing experience of sitting down between two unaccompanied 12-year-old kids on their way to meet their grandmothers.)  Everyone chooses aisle or window first, so the remaining seats are in the middle, ensconced between two people who have already in some way negotiated a row-alliance.  Besides an intuitive sense of who might be good to sit with, finding a seat depends on the fine art of overhead-compartment Tetris.  Can I smoosh this duffel bag and that coat together in the other bin, to make room for my little silver suitcase?  Yes!  

We were just waiting for someone nice to sit with us, say the two smiling ladies I join in the third row.  Of course, everybody nice. You smart, says the lady to my left, I been sitting here thinking there's room in that bin, and you just figured it out.  Mm-hm.  I introduce myself, and discover that both my neighbors are on their way from San Francisco to the 108th Church of God in Christ Convocation in St. Louis.  Cool!  I ask about the conference, and discover that these women have just met, which is pretty much what always happens to my neighbor on the right, when she takes the chance of traveling on her own.  I tell my children I always meet other people on their way to the meeting, so they don't have to worry.  My neighbor tells me anywhere between 40,000 and 60,000 people attend the meeting each year, so her confidence in finding fellow travelers is backed up by probability, and I can tell it's also grounded in the resilience of faith.

108th, of course. there's a big contrast between my informal impression of the meeting - an unstoppable river of super-strong, soulful women gathering together from all directions - and the holy-dude lineup of its public face.

I read for a long time, over the arid plains, and then towards the end of the trip, my neighbor to the right & I start talking again.  She mentions her family: Mother to eight, Grandmother to 34, Great-grandmother to 38, and Great-Great Grandmother to 1, with another on the way.  Meanwhile, this lady looks as though she could be in her sixties.  Ma'am, may I ask how old you are?  You certainly may, child.  I turned eighty this year.  Holy smiling matriarchs!  I tell can see how proud and happy her family makes her.  Do you have any kids? she asks.  No, I tell her, starting about eight years old, I started telling people I never wanted to have kids, so I feel blessed to have gotten what I wanted.  My husband and I are both happy this way - we love each other, our work, our friends and family, and our dog.  That's good, then, she says kindly.  We're all so different, and it's good to appreciate what you have.  I pause to savor this acceptance between us: two very different women, respecting one another just as we are.  It feels like sunshine.  It feels like darshan.  It feels like coming home.

I had a dog once, she says.  Big ol' German Shepherd.  I called him Bunny.  Bunny Seymour.  He was a really good dog.  Used to be my peoples, I mean Black peoples, we didn't have dogs, but now everybody love dogs.  Anyway, my daughter's baby started coming during a big storm - this was in L.A- and when the truck came to take her to the hospital, Bunny jumped up in the back with her and wouldn't get out.  He thought they was taking her away, and he wanted to go with her.  Lord!  My son had to get up there, and get him out.  Bunny was mad!  He wanted to go with my daughter, wherever they were taking her.

I tell Esther Seymour we have a dog we call Bunny, too, even though my Mom thinks it's a pretty silly name for a big black dog.  Yes!  she laughs.  That's true.

As we land, I ask if there's anything in the overhead bin I can help get down, before the wheelchair comes for Esther.  Oh, yes, she says, my hat box.  Your hat box?  I waggle my eyebrows.  Tell me about your hat!  Do you get to wear beautiful hats at the meeting?  Esther tells me about the Code of Hats - which colors for which days, to honor which sections of the {seemingly very male} church leadership.  Glimpsing a world in which having a lot of hats is filed demurely under the guise of devotion to holy gentlemen, I ask Esther what she has with her on this trip.  ​Oh, it's a little black one, with a real pretty flower that comes down on my cheek.  Just looking at the gesture my neighbor makes in describing it, I see how elegant the hat must be, perched over her shining face, and how satisfying, to have lived eighty years, to have left rural Alabama as a child, to have cleaned houses and raised children, to have started a business and succeeded, and to be here, on this adventure in the sky, flying across the country to celebrate the great Heart at the heart of it all.

As I lift down the big, heavy round box, expecting only the weight of a little chapeau, there must be a question in my eyes, because Esther twinkles, Oh and my mink coat.

Esther Seymour, mother of Bunny Seymour and of multitudes, I think I love you.