Travel Angels

Lost! Panic begins . . .
That shortness of breath, then dread . . .
Kindness appearing

My father used to call them “Travel Angels.”

Not guardian angels in the theological sense.

More like:

unexpected humans who appear precisely when travel has started unraveling around you.

He encountered them often.

Partly because he traveled frequently. But also, I think now, perhaps because he moved through the world in a way that allowed them to appear.

When I was in law school, I spotted a tiny classified advertisement looking for airline couriers. This was back before modern digital document transfer had completely taken over everything. Courier companies needed people willing to “carry” time-sensitive paperwork internationally, because freight check deadlines were too early for last-minute legal or business documents.

So the company would:

• buy you a plane ticket,
• check the documents as your baggage,
• and send you somewhere.

You would then spend a week or two traveling on your own before eventually meeting another courier-company representative at the airport to receive your return ticket home.

This part always stressed me out on Dad’s behalf far more than it stressed him out.

The entire arrangement had a very:

“Well, hopefully someone named Klaus will materialize near Gate 14 with my ticket home” energy.

Sometimes the company even paid you.

Sometimes you paid them a tiny amount instead.

My father — a physician with an absurdly busy practice — somehow turned this into a semi-regular hobby.

Every week he’d receive a fax listing possible destinations. If he could leave immediately, the trip was essentially free. Otherwise, he could pay a pittance, and “book ahead.”

And so, through a combination of spontaneity, logistics loopholes, and what now feels like another geological era of travel, my 6’7″ father periodically vanished off to parts unknown.

He slept in strange accommodations.
Once, according to family lore, in a girls’ dormitory in Japan.

(Cue size 15 feet off the end of a single bed)

At some point during one of these trips, he found himself turned around and bewildered in Tokyo. A tiny Japanese girl took his hand and guided him where he needed to go.

The visual contrast alone still makes me laugh.

A giant rangy doctor stooping along behind a tiny determined child.

He loved that story.

But more than that, he loved what it represented.

Travel Angels.

People who appeared unexpectedly at exactly the moment disorientation tipped toward distress.

At the time, I mostly thought this was one of Dad’s charming travel phrases.

Now I think he was identifying something real.

After Africa, on the long journey home, I landed in Frankfurt exhausted beyond language. Not pleasantly tired. Strange-time-zone, emotionally untethered, post-travel exhausted.

At baggage claim, the lanyard holding my phone snapped (unbeknownst to me).

I realized it as I was leaving bag check. Lanyard around neck…suspiciously light.

No phone.

And in modern travel, losing your phone is not merely losing your phone.

It is losing:

• boarding passes,
• maps,
• contacts,
• hotel information,
• banking,
• translation,
• communication,
• orientation,
• identity.

It is the tiny glowing rectangle that now contains your ability to move through the world.

I remember the sharp cold wave of panic.

Then, as I walked toward some slightly fierce Germanic Customs officials, I heard someone call out softly:

“Shepard?”

Far across the terminal floor, a fellow traveler — a small Asian man, clearly also just passing through Frankfurt himself — was standing there holding my phone.

Every ten seconds or so he would call again, tentatively:

“Shepard?”

The whole thing felt slightly surreal.

He didn’t speak English. I don’t think he spoke German either.

He had apparently extracted my name and appearance from my driver’s license tucked into the back of the phone case, then stationed himself there waiting for the owner to appear.

I hugged him immediately, despite the fact that I had been traveling for approximately fourteen thousand years and probably looked like a jet-lagged giraffe.

Travel Angel.

And increasingly, these are the moments that stay with me most vividly.

Not necessarily:

• famous landmarks,
• expensive experiences,
• or “top ten” sights.

Instead:

• a stranger waiting at a counter,
• a ryokan quietly trying to solve a breakfast problem,
• a guide, without drama, printing out the itinerary every day for a traveler without What’s App, and accompanying another to ensure she obtained necessary meds,
• someone carrying a marble across the world for me,
• small acts of attentiveness,
• humanity briefly breaking through the machinery.

I think my travel style has changed over the years.

When H and I first traveled together, I blogged largely because H had a terrible memory and wanted us to be able to remember everything later when we sorted through photos. The writing became highly informational. If it was Monday, we were in Istanbul and here were seventeen historical facts and six architectural observations.

But somewhere along the way — maybe during Africa, maybe even before — travel itself started shifting for me.

Less:

covering ground.

More:

allowing resonance.

And maybe that is partly what my father was doing all along.

Not simply moving through countries.

Moving through them open enough for humanity to enter the story.

I suspect that’s why he noticed Travel Angels everywhere.

You have to leave a little room for them.

And honestly?

I think the world may contain more of them than we realize.

My father was always on the lookout.

I think I am now, too.