“Perhaps I’ll just leave,” Rhea thought, then started to gather her things with shaky hands.

As she stood up to go, she stumbled, and rather than catch her as instinct should have made him, the man beside her flinched away as if to avoid getting splattered with mud.

Rhea fell to her knees and inadvertently spilled the contents of her purse. She started to collect her things with trembling hands, knowing she was the focus of everyone in the cabin.

An expensively dressed old lady who had been sleeping peacefully until the ruckus woke her got up from her seat and also went down on her knees to help Rhea.

At that, the cabin went silent, and the passengers stared dumbfounded as one of them treated Rhea like a human. The first thing the woman picked up was a passport photograph of a little boy.

“Thank you very much,” Rhea whispered as she collected it from her.

“This is my son,” she said with a teary smile, still on her knees. “He is the pilot of this plane.”

“He must have grown up to become a handsome young man,” the rich old woman said.

“How could I know? I had to give him up for adoption when he was just five because I had no means to take care of him.” As she spoke, tears fell from her eyes, and the cabin remained silent.

“I’ve been looking for him for years but I’ve not been able to find him. Recently, I found out he became a pilot so I started to go from airport to airport looking for him. Today I found him but the only way I could get close to him was by boarding this flight.”

Rhea looked up at the people around, most of whom averted their eyes shamefully, then she continued.

“I’m sorry for making you all feel uncomfortable but I just wanted to be as close to my son as possible which is why I saved up my money to get this chance. The business class is closer to him and I’ve never flown before so I thought it would make a great birthday gift for myself.”

The passengers listened to her story, and by the time she stopped talking, many were crying. Rhea got up eventually and went with the flight attendants, who were hell-bent on introducing her to her son.

“What if he doesn’t want to see me?” she asked, resisting their urging. “What if he hates me for abandoning him?” Before the flight attendant could speak, the man who had been against her sitting beside him beat her to it.

“You had no choice, I believe he will understand that,” he said before quickly diving behind his newspaper again. He was also ashamed. Rhea left with the flight attendant to finally meet her son.

After some time, a man’s voice was heard on the plane. “This is the captain speaking… there is a special person flying on this plane — my mom, and it’s her birthday today.”

Everyone applauded the old lady, and those who had ridiculed her before apologized for their mistake. When the plane landed, the pilot, whose name was Joseph, met up with his mother, and finally, after many years of estrangement, Rhea held her son again.