It is 4 AM and my mother and I wake up. The airport in Bangor is small. The smallest airport I have flown out of yet. The flight has filled up while we slept. Despite it being the first flight of the day. It is the day after Independence Day. When the time comes, the flight attendant asks my mother and I, since there is only one seat left, if we want to split up. This is my mother’s first time flying on my benefits.

To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing yet. We choose not to split up. There is another flight at 9am. I go back outside. Smoke cigarettes. Watch TSA shut down for their long break between planes, and go back inside.

9 AM finally arrives. We get first class seats but our plane lands too late for the connecting flight to CVG. I feel whiplash from the change in fortune and the proverbial ride has only just begun.

Let me back up.

My mom has wanted to go to Bangor, Maine for a while now. In 2022, we almost made it there by car, but no cigar. Fast forward two years, and Josh is playing with Wayne Graham, and Wayne Graham is touring New England. Three of their dates are opening for Tyler Childers. One of those dates is July 5th in Bangor, Maine.

July 5th is about the half way mark of Josh’s tour. It’s a perfect opportunity to cure my missing him, see him open for a big crowd, play for a band he loves, and also take my mom to Bangor fuckin’ Maine.

If you want to know how Maine went, see below. If you’re eager to hear about purgatory in Philadelphia, skip to the next section.

Maine, Cadillac Mountain & Backstage.

Acadia National Forest is exponentially more beautiful than I anticipated. Like, my mom kept talking about it, and I looked up photos online and I just didn’t get it. Until I arrive.

Seriously, it is so beautiful, and easy to get around, and even though it is July, a cool breeze blows at the top of Cadillac Mountain where I learn about Cadillac Granite, and hold my shirt down because I’m not wearing a bra, and I love it and don’t care if I write run on sentences about it.

We eat lobster. Good lord, sweet heaven and earth, there ain’t nothing like a fresh lobster sandwich.

Josh is driving from a show in New York, meets us late in the evening at our casino hotel, and we watch Bangorians watch fireworks from the top story of the parking garage. (Longest fireworks show I’ve ever seen).

We eat breakfast at the hotel, then we all explore Bangor. We see a statue of Paul Bunyan, Stephen King’s home, and the cemetery that inspired Pet Cemetery. We drop Josh off in the backstage area of Tyler Childer’s Show. He makes sure we have tickets to get back in later that night.

Mom and I drive to a lighthouse, a fort, a bridge with an elevator to an observation deck, a very large flea market, and eat more lobster. My friend Amanda suggests a small, walk up only, road side lobster stand just on the outside of Bangor, and it delivers.

We park and find Josh backstage at the Maine Savings Amphitheater. Josh and his band Wayne Graham will open for Tyler Childers. Back stage there are go carts, delicious buffet meals, green room trailers, and I glimpse the man himself, mr. timmytychilders.

Wayne Graham does great. I love seeing them on the big screens. My mom is colored impressed and awed at all things Live Nation. Tyler goes on and Josh gets us *On Stage* behind Tyler Childer’s band. Josh tells me to listen very closely. The noise of the crowd as Tyler enters the stage is deafening.

This is particularly relevant because just like most of my friends back home in Kentucky, we all have a story of knowing or seeing Tyler “before he got big.” I won’t elaborate, but I will say this: it is truly wild to see a man in a tiny bar with maybe a dozen other friends, and then see him greeted by 20,000 strangers at a deafening volume. Even witnessing it, I can’t fathom how anyone goes from one point to the other. It’s so easy to see celebrities and believe, nonsensically, that they were born that way? That they never had a “normal life.”

And yet here I am, attempting to wrap my head around the fact that I have been wrong all along.

Anyways. Mom and I have an early flight and we, regrettably, can not stay late. I say good bye to Josh with a long, long hug.

Purgatory in Philadelphia: Pergadelphia.

We don’t make the connection in Philadelphia. I find a customer service desk because I want an experienced opinion on what to do next. There is another direct flight to CVG where our car is, or we could chance an earlier flight with another connection. Fly through Charlotte or Chicago maybe.

The customer service agent tells me to trust my gut. I decide we will wait until 3:30 for next direct flight to CVG.

Multiple timelines are created. I am on Timeline 1. Timeline 2 probably gets me home without an existential crisis. One can only presume.

Our plane delays 15 mins…at a time for 4 hours. I am watching it on Flight Aware. The plane finally takes off and lands in Philly, and then, without announcement, tails are swapped. A second plane arrives.

I’m inexperienced at this point, but even my gut says, this can’t be good.

The gate area is teeming with passengers who are near giving up. Some have already jumped ship to the 7 pm flight to CVG (conveniently positioned across from our gate.) A new timeline opens up. Do I move my mother and I to the other flight? Risk competing for seats against all the other passengers let down by the 3:30 flight?

Timeline 3 is created.

I decide to wait it out. We get a confirmed seat on our delayed flight. I have given myself all day to get home. I feel the wind of fortune. We board. We push back. We line up for takeoff.

Then the captain says something suspiciously like bullshit and the plane and all the confirmed passengers return to the gate.

There are angry masses getting off our plane. They are rushing the gate for the 7 pm departure to CVG.

I am reminded of the Titanic passengers rushing for seats on the lifeboats. There are more people than seats, and gate agents are inundated. They turn passengers from our flight away. The doors are closed with 20 empty seats unfilled. Timeline 3 reveals itself. We would have definitely gotten on the 7pm plane, made it home, and driven home from CVG tired.

Those who were not on Timeline 3, are behaving as if the ship is sinking. Security is called.

The woman who has been trying for two days to get home to CVG is near tears. She is also, the quickest to smile and share information among fellow passengers. I wish we were friends. She seems like someone who can cry and encourage me to cry, and then carry on.

I am a bundle of nerves. I no longer believe our plane will leave. The crew is mingling at the gate, body gestures are frustrated. I can hear them and they are also expressing their doubt that the plane will leave tonight.

I have a 2:30 pm shift tomorrow. If I don’t make it home by 2, I could lose my job. I should have taken the first plane out of Bangor. Should have left my mom. Let her figure out her own way home.

I’m joking.

I’m not joking.

But I am absolutely in a PICKLE.

Should I tell my boss, the hell hounds of Philly have me in their grasp? My coworker, Jenny, who’s been letting my dogs out for 3 days, says don’t, you’ll be fired for missing work due to traveling. I’m also still under probation. She says she’ll cover for me tomorrow if things go terribly wrong. BLESS HER.

Spoiler: We will become best buds and work pals.

In Philadelphia, however, my future is unclear. I haven’t eaten anything and I’m too undecided about coffee. Do I cut my self off and accept I may be sleeping in an airport, or do I get a coffee and hope that I get on plane and then have to drive home (almost 2 hours) from CVG airport?

I decide to spiral.

Maybe I don’t care to lose my job. Maybe this is all shit. Shit benefits for shit pay. I work for the airlines and I’m stranded? It’s bullshit. Right?

Maybe the universe has other plans for me. Maybe it’s trying to tell me to get a job that can afford me options, like, idk, to pay for a seat on a plane out of PHL.

We wait 2 more hours to be told the flight has been delayed until 10 the next morning. All the passengers who have paid for a seat on this flight get a hotel voucher. But because we are standby, we do not. I book us a hotel, confirm there is a shuttle, and I fall asleep in a fever dream, filled with despair and derangement. Besides my somber face and general quietness, I’m not sure my mom has any idea.

When we return in the morning at 7:30, our flight has disappeared. I break down and I call my boss who can’t make much sense of anything. We recognize some of our fellow stranded passengers and they tell us TSA won’t accept their boarding passes (from the night before). More of us are gathering now. Our bloodshot eyes watch ticket counter agents scramble. We are told an email will solve the confusion. Our sleep deprivation makes us acquiescent.

Eventually, we are granted a special line through TSA, per aforementioned email.

They are sending a third plane.

This is a specific kind of waterboarding.

My mother and I buy breakfast bagels. When my mother says “I don’t taste much cheese on this“ I hear, “is this the best you can do?”

I am being defensive. Or maybe Survival Mode gives me super vision, to see through the bullshit.

My mother is small talking with me, and I’m not capable of reciprocating.

It is, as if I am being tortured for information I don’t have.

They are sending a fourth plane.

The gate agent announces that the airlines “apologize for any inconvenience.” My supervision tells me, they do not acknowledge the trauma they have subjected us to. Gaslighting is their business model.

Where there was once 50, only 30 remain. I wish I could say the missing twenty are in a better place but I just don’t know.

We board the plane. I am completely detached from reality. Nothing is real, and nothing means anything. We could buckle our seat belts. Put our tray tables and seats in the upright position. We could cross our fingers for good luck. We could do everything right and the plane could turn right back around. Return to Philadelphia. Return over and over and over again.

I am not assigned a seat by my mother, and I’m quietly thankful. I can’t answer questions. I can’t make plans. I can’t.

The woman next to me, tells me, she offered to switch with my mom so we could be together, but my mom said no. The woman begins to tell my my mom is worried her seat in the exit row would be hard to switch out of. I tell the woman, my mom and I are just to the point we can’t make decisions.

The woman responds, “It’s just funny, we know who everyone belongs to.”

It’s trauma bonding.

But she’s right. How many flights do we get on and get to know any one? When I see the faces of the 30 fellow survivors, we smile and communicate with our facial expressions. We hold our hands up, fingers crossed.

Goodluck to you.

And you as well.

I can hear cargo doors closing. The gate agent is counting passengers. Twice. Maybe we lost a few more people. Maybe she too is astounded by the measly number of survivors.

Twenty? Twenty souls lost?

Probably she is just doing her job.

I am texting friends, terrified of telling anyone I’m on a plane. Terrified of assumptions that this fourth plane will take off. Terrified of jinxes. Or hopes and dreams and nightmares that become real, tangible beasts that win in the end.

We are delayed (of course) told we are waiting on a fuel truck. The door closes at 11:30 am and I have 23% battery.

The woman next to me moves to an empty row. Makes it a point to tell me it’s nothing against me (this time or…?) and all I can think about is whether it’s good luck or bad luck to rearrange ourselves on the plane.

When the Woman who Cries and Smiles comes to the back of the plane and sees me, she says hello like she is surprised to see me. Like perhaps, now that we have all gone through this experience, we know anyone can disappear at any time.

A row ahead of me, a wife turns on her husband. Newly in a row by myself, I turn on my mother.

I am trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong. How I could have done it differently.

Did I get too comfortable? Too complacent. Too arrogant.

I’m remembering the time a coworkers’ left Chicago. And then turned around mid-route and returned to Chicago. Cancelled.

Nothing is real.

This is how god was created.

God is chaos.

I want to puke.

We are inching forward, taxiing. When the captain says prepare for take off, I still don’t believe in anything.

Chaos is god.

If I make it home, I will joke with my coworkers that I think I’ll need therapy after this, but I will mean it.

The plane takes off.

In the air, the flight attendant offers me a pretzel or cookie?

I will write about this experience for my blog. Maybe I will write it up for real, submit it to the New York Times or the Atlantic.

They will take it, modify it and rename it: confessions of a drama queen. I will let them. I wonder what price I will pay for the ability to say I published something in a publication people know about.

This is why all of this has happened to me. I wanted something (a flight home) and when I couldn’t get it, I wanted something else.

Fame? No, not fame, the ability to pay my bills.

How dare I.

I think about how I will write my essay. How it could end with, “Alas I made it home and it was a happily ever after” but it will sound like “I was not surprised when they told me the engines failed.”

I am a psychopath

I cross my fingers for good luck and it looks like I take it all back.

Everything is stolen time and stolen luck.

The Woman who Cries and Smiles, jokes that she will need therapy when she gets home. She means it. When my mother and I exit the Cincinnati airport, I see a woman put her twin baby stroller on the escalator. She is just tall enough to stand with her hands out stretched. Her husband is up higher, telling one of the twins to stop. What ever they are doing. Stop.