The child drew me with wings

Dear Delyara, I am a flight attendant. On the overnight flight from London, a little boy travelling with his father became frightened during turbulence. He grabbed my sleeve and asked whether airplanes could fall out of the sky. I told him the aircraft was built to handle the movement and that the pilots were trained for it. I gave him apple juice, showed him how to breathe slowly, and stayed nearby until he slept. Before landing, he handed me a drawing made on the back of the safety card. It showed the plane, clouds, his father, and me standing outside the aircraft with large blue wings. He said, “You kept it up.” I smiled because passengers like simple stories. What he did not know was that my own mother had died that morning and I had taken the flight because compassionate leave would have meant losing three days of pay I could not afford. I had spent twelve hours serving coffee, calming strangers, and closing curtains around my grief. In the crew hotel, I placed the drawing beside my mother’s last message. A child believed I had held an airplane in the sky while I was barely holding my own body upright. I folded the picture carefully. It is easier to accept wings from someone who does not know how close you came to falling.