Takeoffs and Landings

Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.

Perhaps that means that what we leave behind is always with us, just a little. Though we’ve left it behind, home is still here, too.

Leaving home was a bit more surreal this time.

The first time, we were launching, like the tiny spiders in Charlotte’s Web, out into the great unknown, our detached strands of web trailing in the air, hoping to catch onto some likely spot and spin a new home. We were leaving the known, the tame, the stale, the past, and going on to adventure. This week, it felt like we were leaving words unsaid, visits unmade, the literal detritus of our lives scattered like breadcrumbs behind us. Two weeks — fifteen days, really — simply wasn’t long enough (though at times it felt plenty long, and then some).

Obligations, complications and petty annoyances always accompany travel at some level, and especially visits home, where all of your hard won adult detachment can be sorely tried. You can find yourself arguing hotly with someone thirty-five years your senior over topics on which you could never be expected see eye-to-eye, generation gaps notwithstanding. You can find yourself tempted to step back into roles you abandoned for your sanity’s sake, and find it hard to step away and let go. You can hear yourself snapping at the people closest to you because it’s too hot and you’re too tired and it’s considered bad manners to take it out on airline personnel and shopkeepers. It feels like you can never be who people need you to be, to surmount the expectations of the strangers you encounter, yet you arrive and step back into a place both familiar and utterly foreign, and do your best. And then, you come home, and think of all the time you wasted being grumpy and reclusive, or hesitant and shy and you wish for just thirty minutes more.

We managed to sleep on the leg of the trip between Detroit and Schipol, which was nothing short of a miracle, as we were unable to relax at all on the way to California (thus arriving sleep deprived, and remaining puffy-eyed and dazed for almost the whole visit). Saying goodbye to our last friend and family member after ten p.m. and then packing and weighing our haul from Costco and other places was a mistake, and meant that we were absolutely wiped out when weset the alarm for P.M. instead of A.M.. Of course we overslept, arriving at the airport later than planned. However, we were well taken care of — and a shout-out to Yuko at the Northwest Airlines SFO desk who kindly helped us reorganize our luggage to avoid paying a heavy-bag charge. We ended up checking a box and adding a carry-on, but we utterly forgot about the TSA regulations requiring only four ounces of liquids in a carry-on — thus our Costco maple syrup and honey went to some happy airport janitors. This was hugely frustrating, but with the TSA, you don’t complain, and the agent was at least sympathetic, even while she did the job she had to do. At least we got on the plane without much more fuss.

The worst thing about the return trip was hanging around Schipol airport for three hours. We were this close to getting home and going to sleep, but for the layover. A layover in an airports with small gates and limited seating is beyond aggravating. Additional small annoyances included being unable to find our taxi in Glasgow — being at one stop while he was at another — and pushing rattling luggage carts back and forth looking for him, but finally we got it together and arrived home to add suitcases to the half-empty boxes stacked around the living room. Our house now looks like a cyclone hit it. This week it is our stated goal to clear out and get settled, but we’ll have to do it in pieces — an overwhelming urge to take a nap reaches out and swamps us every so often. Oddly, we aren’t jet-lagged, and changing time zones seems to have been effortless, thus far. We credit the lack of jet lag with drinking at least two quarts of water per flight, but T feels like she so easily went back to Pacific Time because she’s never quite adjusted to UK time. Some people are apparently floaters and simply sleep when it’s dark — which means that the abundance of light in California allowed her to sleep very little. Fortunately today it’s rainy and dark, so an early bedtime should be possible.

Soon, business, busy-ness and work will reach out and suck us down again, and we’ll not have time for this melancholy that follows us from room to room. We’ll be going to the Highlands with the International Club next month, meeting with one of T’s writing group friends who will be visiting in July, and doing the major writing we’ve put off — dissertations and novel drafts. In awhile, nothing will seem so repellently foreign, and we won’t have to bribe ourselves to leave the house and interact with humanity. For now, though, we’re taking it easy on ourselves, giving ourselves a break when we can’t find things in our new kitchen, trying to shrug philosophically that the property manager didn’t fix the washer, sitting down and putting up our feet when the mood strikes. We’re easing back into things, holding on to the relaxation of being home.

They say takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous times on an airplane, the times when the things that go wrong can be fatal. We’re in sight of the runway, making our approach, and soon we’ll have our feet on the ground again in the place we chose to be. Eventually it will feel like we’re home.

– D & T

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