Sweet Lucia

After the 13-hour, window-seat trip from Chile, it felt good to walk around the airport in Madrid, while waiting for my flight to London.  At gate R6 in Terminal 4 (or 4S) I sat in the farthest row of unoccupied seats when I spotted a mother and little girl in conversation.  Too far away to hear the conversation, I smiled anyway and was delighted when the energetic, cute little girl ran over near  where I sat.  “I can run around,” she said, and then indeed she did run around in circles several times before parking her behind in a seat near me.  It turned out her mom was from Chile and that they had come in on the same flight as I had from Santiago and were headed home to London.  Lucia, two years old, mostly spoke English, but understood her mom’s Spanish perfectly and replied in kind when her mom spoke to her in Spanish.  For several minutes, we shared some friendly small talk.  When time came to board, they went ahead, as they had priority boarding.

Upon boarding myself, the two seats beside me remained empty for the longest, but I knew it wouldn’t last, as the crew had made several announcements about its being a full flight.  I quietly hoped that someone had missed their flight and that I might have some extra room to stretch my legs.  Finally, who came to fill the two empty seats but Lucia and her mom (whose name I never learned)?  From Madrid to London, Lucia and I came to be buddies, as she sat between her mom and me.  I watched as she played with her Dora sticker book, and with her chicken/spinach flatbread sandwich.  “I can do it myself!” she told her mom who was trying to fasten Lucia’s seatbelt.  Lucia let me know that she would soon be home having a cuddle with both dad and mom.

Upon landing at Heathrow apparently the jetway stopped short of the plane and we had to wait while some fix was identified.  The fix was stairs, so I helped Lucia and mom with their luggage down the stairs and back up to the terminal.  By that time Lucia had latched on to me.  She took her mom’s hand in one of hers and offered me the other, an honor I certainly could not refuse!  As we walked down toward immigration control, her mom laughed at how Lucia had latched on to me and said that when they were boarding the plane, Lucia had said, “I want to find that woman,” meaning me.  How interesting that she did just that:  find me!  By this time they almost felt like family and I considered giving them my email address.  I didn’t, though, thinking it might be too forward or too weird.  I wonder if I’ll always be sorry I didn’t, as it seemed so much like somehow we were meant to meet?  But then, if that is really the case, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucia doesn’t somehow find me again!