On Delta 1138 to DCA

I saw them, first, at the gate while the plane was boarding. They stood out in the mass of business-suited men and women on the early morning flight, a family of four, standing together at the edge of the swarm of frequent flyers filing on to the plane. Someone ahead of spoke to them - probably asking is this was their assigned boarding zone - and the man, wearing a straw cowboy hat trimmed in leather, shook his head "no." The line moved passed them.

Later they boarded and stopped at the row ahead of me. It rapidly became clear (even though only the father appeared to speak English - his wife seemed to only speak Spanish) that they had the two seats on one side of the aisle on the row in front of me, and two seats on the row behind me, but they didn't want to sit in their assigned seats. So they just stopped in the aisle, preventing anyone from getting past them. One of the flight attendants tried to get them to sit in their assigned seats until everyone boarded, and then swap people around, but the father wouldn't sit down with his younger daughter in the row behind me. So the flight attendant moved two people from the row in front of me to the row behind me, and the father and the younger child moved to the same row, but across the aisle, from the other two family members.

Then, the younger child began to wail. Children do sometimes cry on planes, and their parents do their best to settle them down so they don't disturb other passengers. Parents travel with backpacks of small toys and coloring books and special treats to distract their young children, at least in part to prevent the evil stares from fellow passengers. I remember once, travelling to Oklahoma with Iain when he was around three, when he began to cry when we had to put the tray table up for takeoff. He didn't cry for very long but I remember the exaggerated sighs from the woman across the aisle, who apparently not only did not have children but had never been one herself, and the less-than-helpful flight attendant who could have shown up with a plastic cup of apple juice, but instead told me I should get my son to stop crying. So I try to avoid staring disapprovingly at parents of crying children - I'm just happy that it's not my child that's crying - but we all couldn't help but notice that the father, sitting in the aisle seat with his young daughter next to him in the window seat, did nothing to try to comfort the child. Not a thing. No arm around her, no whispered words of comfort and reassurance, no reaching for the backpack with the Gummy Bears, nothing. It's like she was someone else's child, and he was in the awkward position of having to sit next to her on the plane. I heard someone say, "It's going to be a long flight."

The flight attendant in the red dress who had previously seen to seating the family in a single row reappeared. She said to the father, very graciously, maybe your daughter is crying because she wants to sit with her mother. She offered to move the remaining person in the row, a woman trapped at the window seat in the row in front of me, who jumped at the offer (I think they put her in an empty seat in first class). Now they had the whole row. The mother moved to the middle seat, with a daughter on each side of her. The younger girl stopped crying and the father settled into the window seat across the aisle, his hat on the empty aisle seat. We were all hoping now that we would be able to sleep, or work, or whatever it was we were planning on doing on the short flight. The plane took off.

As soon as things quieted down, I heard the exclamations from the row in front of me; every few seconds, someone would repeat a two syllable word, with the accent on the second syllable. It was the older child, and I think the word she said over and over during the hour and forty-four minute flight was "Mama." Later, after the seatbelt sign was turned off, I got up to get something out of my backpack and I stole a glance at the older child. She looked happy, but she didn't look like a developmentally normal child. Down syndrome, I guessed. And the younger child wasn't a toddler - I would guess she was five or so.

Before the plane landed, the flight attendant who had gotten them all seated made a final pitch for contributions to breast cancer research, and made another trip down the aisle with a small pink paper bag, wearing a pink feather boa over her red uniform. I don't know what made other people reach for their wallets - maybe memories of their own medical histories, or those of friends or family members - but I did by way of saying thank you for how well she handled us all during boarding.

The plane landed. The younger daughter and the mother got up out their seats; the father took the older girl by the arm and pulled her up out of her seat. I saw the mother wrestle two roll-aboard bags down from the overhead compartment. Then they all walked up the jet way, the mother holding on tightly to her older daughter.