Traveling can be a nightmare for me. RA makes it hard on a good day and beyond hard on a bad day.
When I travel I’m all strategic. I look at airport maps and figure out all the things. I cushion lots of time to get from point A to point B. I take all the extra meds. But it often falls apart. Like lately on a trip to Colorado.
.
.
.
The door I planned to be dropped off at was walled off due to construction and I ended up having to walk three times as far as I planned. The tram stopped at the wrong place. The Denver airport is big and spread out. It could have been a disaster. But it wasn’t.

When my fingers fumbled with a tag on my bag, a woman reached over and said she would do it.

There was the man at security who told me “not today” with a big smile when I started to take off my shoes and pull out my computer.

As I was limping toward my gate a man wheeled up next to me in a cart and offered a ride. Seriously, I could have hugged him.

There was the flight attendant with the wide smile and the knowing looks that seemed to take a few moments here and there to connect with me and make sure I had what I needed.

When the plane landed in Denver, my seatmate reached up and handed me my bag. Without me asking.

Abdul, the car rental shuttle driver, made sure I didn’t lift my own bag and was careful to stand close as I navigated the steps up into the shuttle.

When I looked for a seat on the shuttle, a guy got up from his seat and motioned for me to come over and sit. He looked just like an angel. Other seats were available but that meant climbing two steps an they might as well have been Mt. Everest.

The darling waitress in Denver who kept my Diet Coke refilled.

The check in guy at the hotel in Colorado Springs who discovered I was a writer and he was too and so he told me all about the book he is writing. He came alive and made me forget how much my body was killing me.
.
.
.
Here’s the deal. I didn’t miss for a moment that on a day when the rudeness and the divisiveness and the hatred and the brokenness of the world leaves us spent. . . I found hope.

In a million little gestures that overflowed from hearts that were kind and gracious and generous. It literally took a village of people to get me where I needed to be in one piece. A world village of different accents and languages and skin colors and genders and political leanings.