Here I sit in Williamsburg where my parents live, working on my computer, after a plane trip yesterday. Once that sentence would not be remarkable. But at certain points yesterday, I shook my head at how events were both strange and familiar.
I haven't taken a plane trip in 2 years. In some ways, not much is different, although yesterday it seemed like more people were in the Ft. Lauderdale and Atlanta airports. Yesterday, as I waited in the very long security line at 4 a.m., I laughed at the Kristin who thought the airport would be deserted at that very early morning hour. Lots of people were returning from cruises, to judge from conversations I overheard, including lots of college students. What a different spring break life I had as a student, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I was happy to return home to my own bed and my bread baking equipment.
A major difference, of course, is the masks we all wore, some of us more correctly than others. I was happily surprised that most people had something around their faces on the plane and in the airport once we got past the security line. In the security line, all bets were off. I thought of the crowds on Monday night as we walked to a restaurant and how I worried I might have been exposed to disease that I would bring to my parents. Monday was the least of my worries as it turns out. But I still felt relatively safe during yesterday's travel which may say more about my faith in vaccines, booster shots, and my own mask than it says about the accuracy of my safe feelings.
Although the flights and the airports were packed, yesterday's airplane experience was fairly easy. There was a moment when we landed in Atlanta, where the full moon was setting and the fog was intensifying. In some ways, it felt like we had landed on an alien planet, as the plane rumbled into the parking spot. I thought I might end up stuck in Atlanta until the sun burned off the fog, but my layover was several hours, so it wasn't a problem.
I was traveling alone, so I used the time to get lost in a book, Jonathan Franzen's latest, Crossroads. I understand all the reasons why people don't like him, but he knows how to spin a compelling story, and this one has the best elements of The Corrections, a book which thrilled me. I'm not done yet, but I'm happy to be reading it.
The Richmond airport was comparatively empty, which was a relief, and I had no trouble getting my bag and hopping into my parents' car. And then we were off, back to Williamsburg. If I hadn't known that the temperature outside was in the 50's, I'd have thought that a snowstorm was blowing in. Even with dark clouds, the rain held off.
We relaxed for a bit, made dinner, and then I was off--back to my parents' study, where I logged on to my seminary class. What an amazing world we live in!
This morning, I'm thinking back to the last time that I was here, in January of 2019, and my plan was to return several times a year in a more concerted effort to see my parents more often while they are still in the healthy part of old age. While I've always been aware of apocalyptic possibilities, I would not have anticipated a global pandemic disrupting my plans, along with all the plans of all of us. Sigh.
And now we're looking at a variety of possible plan interruptions: a new variation of this virus, a brutal invasion of Ukraine, chief among them. And then there's my own individual disrupters: job loss, house sale, S. Florida becoming increasingly unaffordable.
Earlier this week, I woke up feeling a bit panicked about money--my last paycheck from my old job was March 15. But I'm trying not to linger long in that panic. Similarly, as I walked through the Richmond airport, I thought, we should have moved years ago--but we don't have a time machine to go back, so that line of thinking isn't useful.
There are days when I worry that I'm diving off a dangerous precipice by pursuing my seminary dreams. But then I go to class, and I am so thrilled to have this opportunity. I choose to see that through an Ignatian lens: seminary is a space of consolation, and worrying about money while I have house sale profits in the bank is a space of desolation.
Let me continue to move towards consolation.
No comments:
Post a Comment