The kindness of strangers: I was a ball of stress taking my four children on an international flight – then a passenger tucked a blanket around my sleeping son

I won’t lie – I was having nightmares before the trip. When my family immigrated to Australia from Europe, my husband travelled ahead to organise a place for us to live. I followed him seven weeks later with our four children, all aged under seven. I was a ball of stress for weeks in the lead-up.

Walking on to the plane with four kids in tow, I could almost hear people think, “Oh my God, I don’t want to be seated next to them!” And I completely understand.

I had booked a window row and a seat in the middle row, thinking that I could put all the kids in the window row and then myself in the middle, where I could keep an eye on them. But when we got into the plane, the flight attendant told me that for security reasons we couldn’t do it that way. We had to rejig, my five-year-old son taking the middle-row seat alone, for what was to be a nearly 24-hour flight broken up into two legs.

There was a man seated next to my son. He didn’t display any of the annoyance he must be feeling about being seated next to a small child – a very kind act in itself, and one that brought me great relief. But his kindness didn’t end there.

At some point during the flight, after the cabin lights dimmed, the other three kids and I dozed off. When I woke up, I looked over to see my five-year-old had fallen asleep as well. The man next to him was pulling his blanket up and gently tucking him in. It was an unguarded moment of care and compassion.

I don’t think the man had any idea I saw him do that. We arrived safely and I never saw him again. But it was such a generous thing to do that, 20 years later, the memory remains magical.