Yesterday afternoon in the garage we came across our neighbors getting bags out of their trunk, which was amusing because a few days earlier we had seen them in the same spot putting bags into their trunk. Then they were flying to London; now they were back; Rochelle still in her pilot’s uniform. Her husband, who is also a pilot, showed us the video of their arrival a few hours earlier at MIA, the plane greeted, as it taxied to the gate, by celebratory arcs of water in honor of Rochelle’s retirement. We hadn’t known that she was retiring but obviously the airport had. In a business that is seen as increasingly impersonal and joyless, it was heartening to see an institutional acknowledgement of the human.
