Sofia?

Our trip was mostly uneventful and fairly painless, in light of the red-eye timing and great distance covered. Not that I managed much sleep during the Atlantic Ocean leg, but we found enough space to stretch out a bit and relax during a six-hour layover in Munich. The seats around us gradually filled in, first for a flight to Sofia and then our own to Ankara. Many others took the opportunity to steal some sleep as well. One doughy Bulgarian gent in particular (I guessed his nationality from his features and apparent destination) fell so deeply asleep that he missed all four announcements for his flight. Thinking back to the kindness of our head-scarved check-in agent at Dulles, who mercifully ignored both the weight and number of our bags, I felt a desire to extend such empathy and begin our family adventure on a good karmic footing. On the other hand, I envied and respected his ability to lose consciousness in such a noisy and unnatural environment. I couldn't be certain this was his flight—maybe, like us, he was waiting for the next, or some other. In the end, hearing the final boarding announcement, and its included call for one final passenger, I took a chance and gently placed a hand upon his knee.

He was slow to wake but quick to register alarm. "Sofia?" I asked, hooking a thumb over my shoulder. He scanned the empty gate for a second and popped up like a game show contestant named from the audience. Sprinting to the closing door, he had no chance to thank me, so the smirking gate agent did so in his stead.

An hour or so earlier, I had asked Callie to pull in her feet as she lay across two seats, so that this fellow had enough room to properly relax. He heard my fatherly admonishment and raised a hand to say "No worries." I mirrored the gesture to say "No bother," and he smiled a little smile that seemed to say (in my ever reflexive monologue), "Perhaps these Americans aren't so ugly after all."

I like to think of this fellow seated on the plane, jangled nerves of the narrowly averted misfortune cooling into deep relief and perhaps the peerless balm of going home, and I picture him smiling that same little smile and mentally thanking his nameless Samaritan. No doubt I overthought the entire encounter. Anyone who knows me will say I do it all the time. But that doesn't change or undermine the fact that we are all ambassadors every moment of our lives and the only borders of substance between enmity and compassion.