For awhile, our world was aloft

To the editor:

Life would be less expensive had I chosen a local bride, but I have never regretted the cosmopolitan complications that followed my marriage.

My wife and I returned from New Mexico, where we had visited Earl from Pennsylvania, Jean and Hugo from British Columbia, Eleanor and Don from Kansas, and another Don who lives in Albuquerque, which I could not spell until he moved there. We returned through a rainstorm across the desert of New Mexico against colored clouds that could have been a backdrop to Wagner.

Our seat mate was a Chicago native who showed us a photograph of her four children and told us that her son had forbidden her to travel again by herself but that she had no intention of listening to his orders.

I recited a poem about the view of the lake from the Loop. We were delayed by storms at our destination, and another lady with two lovely kids and a third in the pouch instantly called her husband in Chicago. The older girl had named her expected sibling Gideon, although they did not yet know the sex.

So we were all up in the air together 101 years after the Wrights had developed the art of flying. It was our total world for a few minutes. We shall not see any of them again, but they enter our thoughts. Maybe they will remember us. I hope so. It is nice to be remembered.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau