written in Hanweiler, Wednesday, September 3, in the evening, after a long and beautifully restoring shower.

Delta knows what every good parent knows: a hungry passenger/child is a cranky passenger/child. So, they feed you within an hour of take-off, as soon as everyone is settled in. (That’s after the initial offerings of cookies or peanuts and a drink.)

As our flight left Atlanta at 4:35 p.m. Tuesday, we were offered dinner: a choice of chicken with corn and black beans and potatoes, or tortellini with tomato sauce (and olives). Plus a small salad, a roll and butter, a piece of cheese, a cookie, and a brownie. Since Mark doesn’t care for olives, and I didn’t care for the cilantro in the sauce over the chicken, we ended up swapping dinners. There are constant offerings of drinks: water, juice, soda, and, after dinner, hot tea and coffee. I like tea – but didn’t think ahead, or think, period, to ask for decaf. One movie passed, then another, neither one interesting to me. I spent some time on the laptop, composing a posting about the sights and sounds and smells of traveling.

After what seemed like hours (but was probably just three or four) of being dead-tired but unable to sleep, I noticed that they were passing out cookies and peanuts again. From one of the hand-outs I knew that they offer small snacks half-way through the flight. It was frustrating to realize that so much time had passed already and we were only half-way there.

Mark and I had a two-seat arrangement to ourselves and tried various variations of leaning, one way then the other, cuddling up, squishing down, legs up, legs down – I think we did finally nod off during the last two hours of the flight.

Since neither Mark nor I wear a wrist watch, and with no other devices, such as cell phones, available to check the time, we were somewhat lost – time-wise. I do remember that at one point, after having dozed off on Mark’s shoulder, he moved, then opened the window covering (does that have a name?), and woke me to point to the sky, the horizon over the clouds: the faintest promise of daylight, with a bit of brighter and more orange light to the east.

Sunrise over the clouds

On the monitors, the annoying TV had finally been replaced again by a map with our route and alternating pieces of information in three languages (I now know that New Orleans is Nouvelle Orleans in French ), information concerning the time at arrival destination, speed, tail wind, etc. On the map, we saw that we were somewhere on the West coast of France, heading toward Paris.

Not long thereafter, the cabin lights came on, a rude and bright light compared to the still faint morning outside the window. Before people had a chance to fully wake up and perhaps realize that they were tired and groggy from having “slept” in an airplane seat – the luckier ones stretched out over three seats they had to themselves – breakfast was served: a warm bagel with cream cheese and preserves (Mark ate the preserves, I had the cream cheese), orange juice, and a banana, plus water and coffee or tea.

Keeping people well-fed, at least quantity-wise – I am sure one can find reason to complain about the quality of “airplane” food – is one of the wisest investments an airline can make.