It just so happens that I have recently been flying quite a
lot. Well, let me put this in perspective. Since I can remember, my family has
lived so spread out across the states that the closest family member (outside
mom/dad/sister) was a six hour car drive away – the others were only reachable
by plane. So at least twice a year since, well, whenever I have memories, I’ve
been flying. Then, I went and attended college in California, so there were
lots of flights. So when I say that I’ve been flying a lot recently, I really
mean it. I flew to Budapest at the beginning of the semester, to Germany from
Budapest during that semester, and then in the last four weeks, I went:
Budapest-Paris-Detroit-Erie –/-- Washington, DC – Istanbul – Frankfurt
--/--Frankfurt-Detroit-and in 2 hrs and 12 minutes as the monitor screen tells
me, I will land in San Francisco.
There comes a time in transatlantic flights, after whatever
boxed up and tiny meal has been delivered in plastic packages, after you’ve
gotten the chance to doze just a bit but are really coming to terms with the
fact that you won’t properly sleep – when it’s either the middle of the night
in the timezone that you’ve just come from or in the one that you are currently
flying through, so darkness is either everywhere inside your head or in front
of your eyes – and it’s the twilight zone. I don’t think this just happens to
me, but then again, I’ve never asked anyone else about it, so maybe I am the
only one. Basically, in these moments, you aren’t just concerned with whether
or not you’ll have to wake up the person next to you so you can get out to the
aisle and head to the bathroom. You’re not worried about making your
connections when you land, nor are you thinking of the people waiting to meet
you. No – this is when you do serious life-thinking. Sometimes, this might feel
like life-panicking, depending on who you are and what time in your life you
are making this evaluation. I’m not sure how the situation can make me feel so
utterly far from my own life, but I feel as if I’m looking at it through a
piece of plastic wrap, or through a see-through tapestry. Funnily enough, I
think it has as much to do with being in the middle of the air above the middle
of the Atlantic Ocean (at least, in my case) as it does with the fact that I’m
traveling alone and haven’t had a real human connection with anyone in hours. I need real contact with people.
Real conversations, even if they’re short. Someone who asks how I am and means
it, or who comes over for a cup of coffee. But traveling? I’m around more
people, far more people, than usual and there is (under normal circumstances)
absolutely no human connection.
But sometimes things break that monotony and that together
but very separate feeling. For example, today there was a very, very large line
of us waiting to go through immigration at the airport. We had just stumbled
dazedly off the airplane from Frankfurt, a solid nine hours of flying behind
us, stiff and smelling like plane – and I, in particular, felt that I must be
sleepwalking since about three and a half weeks ago I did the exact same walk
down the seeming miles of gray, unremarkable airport, to I believe the exact
same immigration desk and then picked up my bag at the exact same baggage claim
carousel. So, that was surreal and I felt the best way to deal with it was to
pick a comfy looking spot on the floor and lie down, but of course, I’m getting
close to being an adult now, which I think just means that you don’t always do
things like lie down and take a nap, - it doesn’t mean you never want to. So, I
imagine things were going similarly for most of my fellow travelers. There was
the typical shuffling in the line, getting pissed at the person in front of you
just because they’re going to get to be done with the line sooner, griping in
your head about most things and just realizing how tiring standing can be. So,
we were there in the gray no man’s land between plane and US, in lots of little
plastic lane dividers and amongst huge signs against cell phones and assaulting
officers, not much conversation going on. Then all of a sudden, there was a
little dash of pink.
Embodying all of our desires, a girl who couldn’t have been
more than four years old had ducked under the dividers (or just walked, I think
she was small enough), skirted right under the noses of all the immigration
officers (her head didn’t go up to their desks, so how could they notice?) and
started wandering around on the other side of this huge international barrier
in her flowing, Disney-worthy pink dress. “Uh-oh.” I heard about ten people
behind me. Her mother moved through the line, trying to see her on the other
side of the desks. We couldn’t see anything since the girl was so small, and
despite angry looks from the guards, the mother then ducked under as well and
went and tried to find her. A few seconds later, a guard who had been standing
with his arms folded, looking both intimidating and bored simultaneously, cried
out, “Ah! I’ve found someone!” and he walked back towards the line and when he
came around the corner of the desk, we saw the girl hanging tight on to his
leg, grinning and waving at her mom, calmly and absolutely refusing to let go.
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