Morning Winds

A Forecast

The flight attendant stops halfway through the aisle. Her eyes bulge. Champagne slips over the lip of the flutes pinched in each hand. She stares, mouth agape, at the decorative mid calf socks of the man next to me in the aisle seat.

“Is that Elton John?” she gasps. A repeated face pattern stares out from the black background of his socks.

“No,” he says. “It’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg!”

He’s the president of an NGO, one you’ve heard of. Not exactly an NGO, a “Society.” He looks like a WASP. Wiry, tall, and ruddy, his crisp short sleeve button down and khaki shorts hang off his tanned limbs like stiff crepe paper. The RBG socks slip softly into lightly worn loafers. Gold rimmed glasses over lively brown eyes. Hair a layered, thick, healthy grey.

He waives off the champagne. I, fat and disheveled in ill fitting clothes, pour it down my throat. He heads a “society.” We live in a society. It’s him. It’s sure as fuck not me.

I’m flying to DCA from LAX. Being pulled into DC’s gravity, I can feel, I think we can all feel, an almost comic sense of impending doom; the goofy feeling that arises in your gut when you’re sitting in the living room waiting for a hurricane to hit. A great storm has gathered over this nation. And it has something to do with this guy. And probably China.

Another flight attendant appears, points to the socks, and says “She’s amazing…I just love her.” I fumble with the zipped up purse of free Chinese toiletries sitting on the console. Maybe there’s more champagne in it?

“We put these in the guest room,” the NGO head says.

I don’t know what he’s talking about. “What do you mean?”

“They’re good for guests. They have little toothbrushes and stuff in them.”

He means that in one’s stately home, one must of course equip our spacious guest rooms with leftover toiletry kits from our first class flights.

“Oh right,” I agree. “because they’d just throw them away anyway.”

At this he begins a nod, then frowns, then looks contemplatively away.

“But you know, houses are too big these days,” he says, shuddering in the cold airplane air. “Our house is quite small. Small and simple. But it’s worked for us. It’s always worked for us.”

He unzips the large grey laundry bag and pulls out the comforter. He wraps it fully around his shoulders, tucking himself in.

The rest of Delta One Classic cabin is occupied by an Indian and/or Arab family led by a hugely fat dad with a classically handsome, pleasant face. A big grinner, but with real conspiratorial charm in the grin. A charismatic person is someone who figures out how to be honest in public. He seems genuinely concerned about the loud and disruptive behavior of his cohort. The oldest boy is about 10, and he screams and cries and flaps around for the entire flight every time he’s separated from his mother by more than a few feet. She is a small and very pretty woman, wearing some sort of Indian and/or Arab mumu, and also alternatively scowls and sobs the entire flight. But his theatrical attempts to help make everyone feel okay about it.

“Good day for some headphones,” my patrician seatmate chimes in, sure to indicate that this, like his guest room advice, is not a chauvinistic or obnoxious comment, but a helpful one. We engage in conversation. Tomorrow, he has a big meeting with someone in the administration, someone that you’ve heard of.

”I could wear these tomorrow,” he says, gesturing to the socks. “And I’d get kicked right out. So I’m wearing them today.”

“Ah yes, today is your day of protest.”

He nods again, then frowns again.

I ask about the nature of his work. He talks about producing propaganda campaigns that benefit the public, flying around giving speeches, that the key to all of it is measuring the benefits of his work, particularly if you can show it in dollars. “I’ve been a bureaucrat a long time,” he says, giving a little wink, “it’s all about proving that positive impact is also profitable.” And he does make a real impact. He says through his efforts he’s been able to drastically reform broken processes and procedures that make Americans’ lives difficult. He gives specific numbers, specific examples of him directly working to remedy problems I myself consider pressing. He’s improved the country. He’s improved my life. And I completely believe him. He not only wants to make the world better, he wants to prove that he did it. He is society. Men like him are why anything works at all.

But then he flips on CNN. It’s JD Vance putzing around awkwardly at Lindsey Graham’s funeral. His demeanor darkens. He proceeds to rawdog CNN for the next five and a half hours straight until we land, rolling his eyes and shaking his head as various evil figures appear on screen, as all caps tickers describe in great detail how these figures torture the needy. So much goodness to give, if only he knew where to put it.

In Alexandria, it’s blustery, hot, and the sky is almost purple. Foreboding winds. The weather app shows a red tornado warning. I love the smell of the swelling swamp and Alexandria is a beautiful little colonial swamp village, rows of pretty brick buildings lead up to the wide Potomac, the Capitol just visible in the distance. For the first time in months I have a couple hours to kill without my girls climbing on my head, so I walk towards the river in search of whiskey.

The Alexandrians are out, enjoying the balmy evening, ready to greet the incoming storm. One man sits at a table on the sidewalk reading the New Yorker under a No Kings sign in the window of his brick townhouse. Another plays guitar on his stoop. A black woman with a body like the Michelin man walks with two little girls, all three covered in clear plastic ponchos.

As she yanks them across the street, she gets a gust to the face. She looks around thoughtfully, tasting the air, and says, “This morning wind.”

“What’s morning wind?” one of her girls asks.

“The storm won’t come til morning.”

Moist rolls of dark green river slosh off the rocks and buoy the big geese. A man on a neon patch of fake turf does lunges shirtless. He’s ripped but with a little paunch, wouldn’t have that in LA. On a park bench, a beautiful brunette holding an umbrella cries and looks out over the water. I see a short pier leading to a floating wooden dock, swaying in the churn. On the dock is a tourist bar attached to a maritime historical institute. Open ‘til 10pm! Interesting. Billowing bunting flags adorn the metal ramp, still out from the Fourth, or maybe there all the time because this is after all American America for tourists. And yes, jutting out from the swaying empty bar is a full on replica of a Revolutionary War fighting ship.

A pudgy, freckled waitress greets me chipperly. “I was just about to close up cause there was a big wall of water coming, but as soon as I packed up, no!” She shakes her head. “I knew it would pass us.”

I laugh. It do be like that don’t it. E.B. White said “The weather is a great bluffer.”

“Let me go bring everything back out…huzzah!” the quirk chungus declares, side skipping into the galley. She comes back with four bottles of different limited edition bourbons. My kind of gal. I mix the heavy and direct Four Roses Small Batch Select with some water out of a big orange Gatorade jug and sip it out of one of those plastic cups that’s so clear and flimsy it seems to disintegrate in your hand. The humid wind smells like goose shit and algae. The water is brown now. Way out over its winding path I can see the Capitol in the fog.

I spend a few minutes breathing it in before anxious thoughts intrude, like they’re bouncing directly off the dome of the Capitol. Isn’t it about time I had a mentor? It’s too late you’re forty fucking years old. You fucked it, you scared them all away. But isn’t it about time someone helped me out? Why do I alone have to do everything? What do I do wrong? No one will tell you because you fucked it all. The bourbon isn’t sweet like I like it. No caramel. All barrel. An American whiskey should be sweet.

The freckled bartender skips over to educate me about the Revolutionary War ship bobbing in the tidal bores right along with us. Why, it’s the Tall Ship Providence! A replica of the legendary 12-gun sloop of the Continental Navy. The original Providence blew up and captured British ships from 1775-1779 before being scuttled by its crew to avoid British capture. It never lost a battle. She informs me that, sadly, the Tall Ship Providence has just suspended operations after many years of financial strain. It posted a $683,000 loss in 2024, and owes $768,000 in loans to its foundation members. It’s her last week on the job.

We’re alone on our stormy island discussing American maritime history when trudging up the metal pier comes a Muslim family in semi-full regalia. The woman wears a full-face burka with a sort of scrubs-like outfit and OC running shoes. The man is short, thin, and thickly bearded in jeans and a T-shirt. Their little boy bobbles around back and forth towards the water. The man catches my attention with a long gratuitous smile, letting me know he’s friendly, but he can’t help but let his eyes flicker to my cup of burning Satan. I smile back and tip my cup in a silent toast.

“Rain?” He asks, waiving at the sky. “Storm?”

“I’ve heard not ‘til tomorrow,” I say. “These are morning winds.”

“Yes, I thought the storm was here,” confirms the bartender, “But then, of course it wasn’t.”

The dock squeals like a pig. The Muslim family converses in Arabic at the top of their lungs, talking over the 90s rock blasting on the Sonos. I gulp the last of the bourbon and leave. “Stacey’s Mom” segues to “Semi-Charmed Life” as I walk down the plank back into Alexandria. A little orange sunset peaks out from behind the buildings. I think she was right about the morning winds. The air is becoming stiller. The water slows down. The wind feels warm and welcoming now. The storm probably won’t hit until tomorrow. But it is coming. On that we can all agree.

FOR MORE LIKE THIS VISIT MAMATHEMAGAZINE.COM OR FOLLOW MAMA