Holding hands

On my return flight to Paris, on Friday, I took a seat besides a couple in their sixties. They looked friendly and I considered that they were the right choice for the day as "travelling compagnions". I kept myself busy skimming the pages of Vanity Fair while our plane was accumulating delay. When the airplane's engines roared to get us on the "landing field" the man searched out for his wife's hand and held it while we flew into the sky. They did not speak to each other. She, gently, closed her eyes and he kept reading his newspaper. It was like they didn't need words to be together. They simply were together and their being together was effortless. I wandered if it had always been that simple between them or it had taken years of explanations, of joy and pain, of screaming and laughing to get to that point? My mind took off following its thoughts and it was just after the Mont Blanc, around Dijon, that the plane started its descent to Paris. This time the woman reached for her husband's hand just before the plane stratched the ground with the wheels. They turned, faced each other and smiled. A little tear made his way on my face and embarresed I reclined my head knowing that this is what we all search for. Here on earth and sometimes in the skies.