I watched the man in the seat ahead of me type out a text: trapped on the flight from hell.

We had been sitting on the tarmac at Dulles for an hour and a half, the sweltering heat and humidity outside cooking the plane and its caged inhabitants and the machine’s AC unable to function while it sat essentially grounded.

The man was traveling with his two young daughters next to him. I was with my son, nearly 12, who leaned his head against the window, craning his face toward the meager cold air dripping down from the little hole in the ceiling.

This is how we became trapped in San Francisco.

I had bought the nice tickets. The ones that avoided overnight layovers and excessive stopping and over-shooting and diagonal bank-shots toward our destination. IAD to SFO to AKL.

Auckland, New Zealand, where my sister and her twins and son and husband have been ensconced (trapped? marooned? totally fine and safe from harm?) since the pandemic started. But the two beautiful islands far away from everything finally opened their doors in May, so I bought a ticket for me and my son to finally go, so I can meet my niece and nephew, and he his cousins.