How I found love on Flight 501

I had always thought I would fall in love with a cute, young Igbo girl I meet at a stage production, get married and have a dozen babies – or at least enough to keep my parent preoccupied and content. But with my kind of busy schedule – and the forever denied fact that I am as introverted as they come, finding this young bride was proving to be a little difficult. Anyways, this was before I took that flight to New York that changed my life. Before I found love on Flight 501. Okay, let me tell the story from the beginning.

I arrived the Port Harcourt International airport in Omagwa that day the same way I usually get in, very early. I went through the usual boarding checks and settled at the departures lounge waiting for my flight to be called. I was dressed in my usual flight wear – a pair of loose fitting jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt and a hooded jacket. As usual, I was hunched over my laptop putting the finishing touches to an article and so, I did not notice when she sat opposite me. I eventually looked up just as the announcer called for Flight 501 to JFK, New York and I saw her. She was dressed simply, jeans and a chiffon top, a grey jacket folded on her lap. She was dark-skinned but somehow I could tell she wasn’t Nigerian, or at least not completely so, her eyes were too wide. I ignored her then, and it was until I was placing my bag in the overhead compartment on the plane a few minutes later that I noticed her again, sitting two rows ahead of me.

All through the trip, I could not help my eyes straying in her direction every now and then. I kept hoping she would just turn her head and catch my eyes. I could imagine the wink we would share, a private secret between just the two of us. Several times, I considered walking over to her and just introducing myself. But as I do not claim to have the heart of a lion, it was no surprise I didn’t. It seemed like nothing would ever bring us together and I was destined to live through life hoping but never having the courage to seize what I wanted. Then it happened.

I was watching the in-flight entertainment on the tiny screen in front of me when the plane suddenly bumped and rolled on some turbulence. I took off my earphones, my eyes naturally staying to her direction and tried to peep over the seats in front of me. The air hostess came over, waving her arms to tell us it was okay, when we hit the second bump. The plane seemed to drop for like fifty feet before righting itself. The air hostess fell into the lap of what I assume was a very grateful man and the oxygen masks came down. I have to admit, I was really terrified, but excited at the same time. I grabbed the oxygen mask, taking breaths of the dusty air as the captain’s voice came over the intercom. We had hit a storm rolling across the Atlantic and would be making an emergency stop away from the face of the storm to Puerto Rico. I was shocked and scared.

The plane banked left, still jolted by the storm and in less than an hour, we were descending into Puerto Rico. Unknown to us, in that drop, which was slightly over fifty feet, we had lost two engines and landing was going to be a chore. Luckily, the pilot landed the plane safely. Emergency services were already waiting for us at San Juan International Airport. All of the passengers were disembarked and ushered into buses away from the plane to a hotel that had been booked for all of us. At this point, we were all just petrified and scared and a lot of us wanted to just go home. The emergency crew must have been bewildered too because while shuffling us into rooms, for some reason I got paired with Lara Seinbott. Yes, Lara was the girl I had been staring at.

A cold and terrible night suddenly turned for the best. We sat together all night talking about a lot of stuff. It was mainly to draw us away from the memory of the danger we had just faced, but somehow, it drew us closer together. Lara lived in New York though she had been in Port Harcourt as part of a project team conducting water research in the Niger Delta. Her parents were both German, though her maternal grandfather had been Nigerian and Igbo. I grinned widely when she told me this part. In New York she lived close to where my sister – who I was going to live with, lived. We swapped phone numbers, twitter handles and Snapchat.

Back on the plane the next day, our seats still spaced as before, there was a collective sigh of relief from the passengers as we touched down at JFK. Lara turned back to me and winked.

I spent my entire trip in New York with Lara, and she took me around the city and showed me all the lights. By the end of the 21 days, as she sat with me at the airport, I told her I loved her. She smiled and said the same. I could not believe how happy I was, somehow, I had found love somewhere I had least expected. Lara would be coming to Nigeria this Christmas to meet with my family. I think, they would be pleased.