I met Sinéad O'Connor just once.
We were winging our way across the Atlantic from New York to Dublin.
It was a fall night in 1992. Sinéad was famous and I was in an even better place than that. I was a new dad.
Our first child, daughter Kate, was just a few months old and I was taking her across the ocean so that she could meet her grandparents and the rest of her Irish family.
This, then, was a serious mission.
It was an Aer Lingus flight on a Boeing 747. Because I had Kate with me our seat was in a bulkhead row with a pull down shelf.
Kate was in one of those boxes provided for infant children. Some called them mushroom chips.
Needless to say I was nervous. My wife, a teacher, was back in New York at work and I was flying to Ireland with our most precious possession.
The Aer Lingus cabin crew fussed over us as we settled into our seats. Kate was quiet and snug in her little box. Hopefully that would be the case for the entire flight.
My seat was on the far left of the middle row. There was a curtain separating economy from business class just ahead of us.
As we prepared to take off it was pulled open by a cabin crew member.
It took but a second to register Sinéad O'Connor sitting in the rear row and in an aisle seat just beyond the curtain.
Her traveling companion was a well known Irish journalist, in both print and television.
But on this flight it would be Kate O'Hanlon who would receive the star treatment; or rather treatment from a star.
We took off into the night and the curtain was pulled across.
I settled in for a night of likely no sleep, but as long as Kate was quiet and happy that was fine by me.
We had flown over Long Island, likely past Boston, when the seatbelt sign was turned off.
And then the curtain moved.
First it was a hand and then there was a face, that famous, beautiful face. Sinéad O'Connor had spotted Kate.
And so began a night, mostly at more than 30,000 feet, in which Sinéad more or less adopted Kate as her traveling companion.
At first we chatted. I introduced Sinéad to Kate and she asked if she could hold my little charge. I said sure. Kate was awake and gurgled with delight. Sinéad, in turn, smiled with evident joy.
This went on for a few minutes and eventually Kate was returned to her little box. Sinéad went back to her seat.
I smiled. That was a pleasant encounter, I thought. I also reckoned that would be it.
It wasn't.
As the plane covered the miles over the North Atlantic Sinéad O'Connor was to be a regular visitor from the other side of the curtain.
It would start out the same way each time. Sinéad would pull the curtain a little back and play peekaboo with Kate, who remained mostly awake, though happy and quiet as the hours drifted by.
At one point I traded places with Sinéad. She sat with Kate and I chatted with the well known journalist.
I remember joking with him that I would have to keep an eye on Sinéad O'Connor when we landed to make sure she didn't run off with our first born.
Sinéad would have been in her mid-twenties that night. She was already world famous. The angst and troubles of her later life had yet to seriously intrude.
Like so many, in the years to come I would shake my head in confusion and bewilderment as Sinéad O'Connor's oh-so-complicated life story played itself out.
But I would always return in my mind's eye to that starry night over the Atlantic when all was so simple; when Sinéad O'Connor's eyes were filled with caring and love for another person's child.
