Happy Valentines Day
February 14th, 2007 |A few years ago Mrs. Smithers was commuting back and forth between Minneapolis and Perm Russia. Perm is so much in the middle of no place that it is not even on the map and it was a 24 hour one way trip by air to get there.
Mrs. Smithers made this trip every couple of weeks and would stay over there for two weeks before returning home. It was an exhausting trip and she would spend the first four days home sleeping. Just about the time she would start to readjust to the time zone change and life would get back to normal she would have to get on a plane and head back over to Perm. It totally sucked ass for me, but at least I was at home. It was much harder for her being away from home that much in a foreign country despite her ability to speak the language.
Getting back home on time and on schedule has alway been important to Mrs. Smithers. Once she gets the notion in her head that she will be back home soon she gets extremely annoyed when any problem interrupts her plan. But flying from Perm to Moscow to Frankfurt to Chicago and then to Minneapolis, any small delay can cause a major problem.
So it was, on one of her final trips back home, some kind of problem with the schedule forced her to fly from Frankfurt to New York instead of Chicago. The beauty of flying to Chicago is that there are so many more flight options to make the trip back to Minneapolis due to the close proximity. But New York? Not so many options. Sure enough, the flight from New York to Minneapolis was cancelled and she was forced to spend the evening in New York.
I remember the phone call. I was catching a movie with a friend of mine and the phone buzzed so I checked the caller ID, saw it was Mrs. Smithers and stepped out to the lobby to take the call. Mrs. Smithers was inconsolable. She desperately wanted to get back home and was furious that she was going to have to spend an evening in New York instead of getting home. I did my best to calm her down but she was still very upset when the call ended. Jet lagged, home sick and sad is no way to spend a night in New York but Mrs. Smithers had no choice.
It’s very easy, when you are frustrated and life has thrown you some inconvenient challenges, to withdraw into your shell and tell the world to eff-off. That’s sure what I would have done. But Mrs. Smithers is not like that. At some point she noticed that an older couple from some eastern European country were stuck in the same situation that she was in. Neither one of these two spoke any English of any kind and Mrs. Smithers’ Russian was only able to help her make very basic communication. Never-the-less and despite her state of exhaustion, she helped this couple get in contact with their family in the United States and then helped them get to the hotel, get checked in and helped them find their room. She also helped them get back to the airport and find their outgoing flight the next morning.
It may not sound like much to you, but it meant the world to that couple. I love that story because it perfectly encapsulates what I love about Mrs. Smithers. Even in challenging times she can be so caring and thoughtful. She easily puts aside her frustrations and problems to help someone who needs it. She is a wonderful mother to Baby Smithers and she is the best partner anyone could ever hope for.
Any co-pilot in the world would have been honored to fly with Charles Lindbergh, but he chose his wife Anne Morrow to fly with. Mrs. Smithers chose me to be her co-pilot and I am the luckiest guy in the world because of it.
Happy Valentines Day.
