Flight of Understanding Life to San Diego -

The flight to San Diego started out with a bang. There is a new time limit of having to check in luggage 40 min before the flight and I was there at 38 min and missed the flight, which had changed in July from 30 to 40 minutes, so I had to wait for the next flight 3 hours later. The leg of Anchorage to Seattle during the day was hopefully going to be full of shooting pictures, since I am finally not flying the red eye flight. You usually have to fly in the middle of the night to be able to hook up with flights in the lower 48. I got on the plane and it was booked solid. I had a weird feeling of deva vue and I knew something was about to happen. There was a cute kid in my window seat and he really didn't want to move, so I stayed in the aisle seat. The boy had no hair and was wearing a baseball cap. He looked like he had been through a rough treatment of chemotherapy and was embarrassed. So I started saying how cool it would be for Halloween to be able to paint his head different colors, like purple or glow in the dark green. Maybe even make an outline of his brain on his head, like we do in Neuroscience Potpourri for the kids. He was laughing and took off his hat and wasn't self conscious anymore.

There is nothing like seeing a kid with leukemia laugh. Well, him and I hit it off and he was taking pictures in no time and enjoying the rough bumpy ride. He at first was a little scared when the plane started dropping suddenly, what a feeling in the stomach. I said this is better than any rollercoaster ride, he got the hint and we made a game of it. We were laughing and having a good time, and this let his very tired mom to get some needed rest. Seth just had a few bad days of chemotherapy and was flying down to Seattle for more extensive therapy. His mom was pretty worried and tired from being up with him all night for the last few days. She looked like she needed some rest and Seth had such a good light hearted personality, that I spent most of the trip talking and playing with him. I enjoyed showing him how to draw Rufus, a dog I sketch, but we didn't have any paper, so we used the barf bag. He drew sponge bob on one side of it. We didn't have any crayons and there is a way to change the color to yellow like eating something yellow, but we just couldn't do it. We went on to playing chess on my iBook and then brought out the Pocket PC. He played for hours Jawbreaker MegaShift and beat my pants off in scoring, go figure! It was really was a beautiful moment in time to see him forget for awhile his severe disease and have some fun and laughter.

His mom even got some needed rest. At the end of the flight, his mom thanked me for baby sitting and she had that longing look of trying to absorb every minute of time in his short life. I have been there and I was trying anything I could do to ease her burden. It made my troubles seem a lot less and how far I have come. There is nothing like helping other people and making them laugh. Laughter is the healer of the soul and it is starting to mend mine.