Susan Elizabeth Hale

 “I once was lost but now I’m found.”

John Newton, Amazing Grace

I sing wherever Igo. It’s something I do. And at the beginning of a year-long trip in 1997 I needed song more than ever. I had just sold my car. All of my things were in storage.

I sat in a plane,flying over Sandia Mountain, my home of twenty-three years. Looking down at the shrinking familiar curve of the Rio Grande River, I realized that Seat C11 onFlight 75 was my home. “This is my destination,” I wrote in my journal.

When I arrived at the Atlanta airport I had a sinking feeling I was waiting at the wrong exit for a new friend to pick me up. A man in a business suit came out and waited at the same curb. I asked if I could use his cell phone.  When I reached my friend I found I had been  waiting in the wrong place. But she knew just where I was and would be there in20 minutes.

After making my call, I thanked the man and handed his phone back to him. He nodded. We stood there waiting, not looking at each other. And then I felt it, the need to sing.I asked him if I could sing to him as a thank you.

He looked at methe way most people look when I ask them if I can sing to them. It is a look somewhere between a deer caught in the headlights and a gizelle about leap.

“Sing to my wifewhen she comes to pick me up. I want to get some points.”

He asked where I lived.

“I live right here,” I told him, the words escaping my mouth before I had a chance to think about them.

“What part of Atlanta?”

“I’ve never been here before.” I told him this was the first day of a year-long journey.

“What gives you that kind of courage?” heasked.

“My great-great Grandmother walked alongside a wagon train from Illinois to Arizona.”            

“We need peoplelike you,” he smiled. Just then his wife pulled up in a Lexus mini-van. He walked to the driver’s window and said, “Honey, this is Ms. Hale. She’s goingto sing you a song.”

I poked my head inside the van and asked her what her favorite song was. She looked at her husband. Iwasn’t so sure that he was getting the points he wanted.

Shyly she answered, “Amazing Grace.” This is what most people ask for. What is it about this song? Is it because it was a slave melody put to words by a slave trader when he had a reckoning at sea? Or is it the comfort we feel when our own ship is about to sink on a storm-tossed oceanand the sea settles into calm? Amazing Grace touches a place of sweetness in us. Like honey in the heart, it fills some deep need to be found. The melody searches for all the blind parts of us that need to see and be seen.

Her eyes teared up as I sang. When I finished there was a moment of silence. Her husband then said,“Honey, get out of the car. We’re going to wait with Ms. Hale until her rideshows up.”

We stood there together on the airport curb, three people found in the grace of the moment.They waved me off like family when my ride showed up. I knew that grace would lead me home.