If the Coat Doesn’t Fit, Write About It
Award-winning journalist Rita Lussier shares how a chance encounter on an airplane and gift of kindness led to writing essays (and a book).
Just the thought of a 6 AM flight to Boston makes me tired. Once I get settled on the plane, I promise myself, a nap will help make up for some of the rest I didn’t get in California.
Suddenly, a loud ruckus shatters the early morning hush as a middle-aged man and woman board the plane.
“You’re the one who left me,” the woman is shouting.
“I would never have left you if it hadn’t been for the gun,” the man shouts back.
As the couple heads down the aisle, I glance nervously at the two empty seats next to me. I breathe a sigh of relief as they squabble all the way to the back of the plane. But fate is not kind on this day. They circle back and end up, you guessed it, in the two seats right next to mine.
“Hi there. I’m Martha. What’s your name?” The woman leans over toward me, her voice loud and coarse, the alcohol on her breath overwhelming.
“Hello,” I murmur reluctantly while groping through my backpack for something to read.
To the amusement of the early morning passengers, Martha returns to her bickering with the man next to her, the whine of the plane’s engines no match for her booming tirade. More entertaining than any inflight movie, we soon learn that the man is Martha’s ex-husband, Henry. He used to hit Martha. He used to throw her up against the wall of their trailer. But Martha still loved him. Until the day something inside of her snapped and she waited for him in the driveway where Henry came face-to-face with his own shotgun. He never hit Martha again.
With all thoughts of napping now aside, coffee finally arrives. For me, that is. Martha has ordered a Bloody Mary.
She asks me again for my name. “Rita,” I tell her.
She tells me about the guy she lives with now who refuses to marry her. She tells me how much she misses her mother who died when Martha was 12. She tells me about her 21-year-old son who recently stole her life savings and disappeared. The details of her life rush by like the clouds outside the window. Despite myself, I feel my heart welling up in sympathy.
As I finally set my book down and truly listen to Martha, an uncontrollable shiver suddenly lances up my spine. Maybe it’s a draft. Maybe it’s the chill of her words. Immediately, Martha takes off her blue vinyl coat and gently places it around my shoulders despite my very sincere objections.
When we finally land, I try to return the coat. But Martha stubbornly refuses. She tells me that it gives her great pleasure to leave me with this gift. Not wanting to delay her departure a moment longer, I agree to keep it, just until she gets off the plane.
As I walk up the jetway, I assure myself that I’m just hanging on to the coat in case I see Martha in the airport. But the coat eventually makes it all the way back home where it now resides in the basement.
Why did I keep the coat?
I had to write about it. In order to try to make sense of the inexplicable events of that flight, I had to recreate the scene—beginning, middle, and end—over and over and over again until I reached a place of understanding. Until my word and thought processing illuminated what, besides the coat, I could take away from that plane.
The resulting essay led me to create more like it, which eventually led me to writing a column for The Providence Journal. I considered each piece to be an 800-word story. That’s all the space I had to work with so each and every word had to move the narrative forward, share an observation or experience, and ultimately leave readers with insights they might not have considered before.
Surprisingly, each column had its own way of coming to me. Maybe this happens in your writing, too. Sometimes, you know exactly how to begin. Sometimes, the ending appears first. Often, you’ve got nothing at all except a visceral feeling that there’s something in your idea that’s worth excavating, a gem that needs to be tilled over and up and down and around until eventually it comes shining up to the surface.
Years later, when my husband and I dropped our youngest child at New York University for the first time and returned home to our “empty nest,” I found myself needing to do a lot of thinking which, for me, meant a lot of writing. In this new stage of life, as I encountered changes in my marriage and friendships, my aging parents and growing-up children, my work, my play, our house, our finances—just about everything—I kept writing. One story at a time. Eventually, I realized there might be a book here.
My memoir-in-essays needed a cohesive structure to hold it together. Chronology worked well with several flashbacks sprinkled in to provide a panoramic perspective. The characters were easy to work with since I’ve known them for years. I chose to ground each chapter in scene, which meant many of my earlier, narrative essays were discarded or rewritten. I explored the challenges of our empty nest in the early chapters and resolved them one way or another toward the end of the book. The theme of the book—how accidental motherhood changed me—became increasingly apparent as the stories melded together to form an overarching one.
Admittedly, the telling felt vulnerable at times. But I believe that honesty and authenticity is the only way to relate with readers. To share thoughts and feelings, painful and awkward though they might be at times. To find the answers to questions not unlike the ones that confronted me on that 6 AM flight to Boston.
Why did I keep the coat?
What made Martha so different? What possessed her to divulge the private details of her life to someone she had never met before? Even little children know enough not to talk to strangers. Oh, a pleasantry or two, perhaps, but not the intimate musings of a soul poured like coffee into the cup of the stranger seated in 24D.
The unspoken rules of social etiquette have taught us to keep our distance. Keep our cards close. But unlike most of us, Martha did not play by those rules. The circumstances of her life had seen to that.
So there she was. Sitting next to me. Just exactly who she was and nothing else. “Hello stranger. Here, take the coat off my back. You’re cold and I like you. You listened to me.”
No games. No pretenses. Just stark, raving honesty. How could I expect anything less of myself?
And so the coat is still down there. Still in the basement. Tangible proof of what Martha taught me. That the boundaries we carefully construct are as fragile as gossamer. So why not reach beyond them while we still have the chance?
Give some time. Give some attention. Give some empathy.
Maybe even a coat.
Check out Rita Lussier's And Now, Back to Me here:
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