Loving Emma: Part 3, on the plane

In the dark airplane cabin, only flickering lights from the centre screen showing a run-of-the-mill Hollywood melodrama disturb my weary eyes. After a lukewarm pedestrian dinner obsequiously served, most travelers have retired into their own designated enclaves for handful of hours of sleep and restoration. I lay my old worn-out edition of Emma on my knees, looking but not reading the familiar story as the words swim in front of me. Ironically, it is in the overcrowded passenger section of an oversea flight to NY that I recovered my senses and finally found a small degree of quiet serenity.

The past – Bailey, the surgery, the long mindless days – though remains vivid in my mind to this day, no longer haunts me with debilitating force. In the present, I focus my strengths on the daily chores I have been tossed and am not thinking beyond. As for the future, the fate of dying alone in a foreign country somehow no longer seems daunting. Perhaps living abroad by oneself is like a boat drifting in the sea far away from her harbor, and when the displaced one perceives traces of hope however intangible, one hangs on that much tighter like a drowning man to a drift wood. But a drift wood is also adrift nonetheless, and only God knows its future home.

"Sorry to disturb you Miss. You like Jane Austen novels?" A soft spoken gentleman in his 40's whispers softly from across the aisle, holding a copy of Pride and Prejudice in Portuguese in his hand. A weak smile breaks my contemplative expression, and I delightfully start to converse with the fellow sojourner – a reporter from Brazil returning home after an extended vacation in Europe. We discuss Austen's work. Despite fluency in four languages, he speaks only broken English, and he doubtfully understands a fraction of the thoughts and pathos I flood him with. But in the intermittent light of the packed oversea flight, I only want to speak about Austen's Emma: her flawed Victorian perception of the high society, her manipulative but well-intended ways, her ebbs and valleys of emotions and impressions reacting to the happenings and doings of her mates. Emma was ever and forever lovable, growing into a mature woman. That Emma was the chosen name of my never-to-be-born daughter I never reveal, and the lesson Emma learned – happiness, even ordinary one, is uncommon – I understand well and hold closely to my heart.