September 15th, 2014: Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean
My home suburb of Vernon Hills has a distinct smell, especially in the early autumn rain. The scent of foliage mixed with the afternoon mist gave me one last humid embrace. I took in several gulps of air, not knowing when I’d breathe it again.
Time started to feel funny. In the days of family vacations and cross-country college tours, drives to the airport felt horrendously slow. This time, it seemed, the more I desperately clung on to the present, the faster it passed me by. Blink once. We were cruising down I-294. Blink twice. We were unloading my luggage. Blink a third time. My mother and I were walking to airport security. Neither of us said a word. We could only put one foot in front of the other and head towards our inevitable separation.
Anyone who knows me knows I hate long, drawn-out goodbyes. You’d think after a childhood of moving cities, immigrating countries and leaving people, things would get easier. They never do. One last embrace, and the only words my mother could muster were “Be safe,” over and over again. The moment brought me back to being seven years old, back in China, leaving my uncle at the Beijing airport to head to the United States. History doesn’t repeat, but it sure rhymes.
I turned around and tried my best not to think about what my mother was going to do later that night, with my father still abroad, back in an empty house. She’d later tell me that after she had sent me off, that same night she slept in my bed.
The O’Hare concourse: I have a real love-hate relationship with this place.
As heavy as I felt, pain gave way to instinct. From security checkpoints to finding my gate to boarding the aircraft, everything felt second nature. I had been an airline brat for almost a decade. If international flying was a competitive sport, I’d be a world class athlete, literally. I drew flight plans in my head, connected dots on the map between major cities, and knew what “exit” and “passport control” looked like in at least ten languages. My next stop, Munich, Germany. Uitgang and Automatische Passkontrolle. From there, an 11 hour flight to my final destination, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Crammed in a pressurised cabin at 35,000 feet was the one place I felt comfortable. So much so that I’ve got the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic flights down to a science. For the latter, it’s usually 7-9 hours. Hours 1-3, you’re alert. The cabin is booming, but also quiet because your ears are popping. By hours 4-6, a fake sleep sets in. The cabin darkens, and you’re full from salty, microwaved food that tasted like a mix of fine-dining and cardboard. By hours 7-9, you try desperately, but still fail, to fall asleep.
The only drawback is the isolation. Life becomes suspended, as if closing that plane door was like hitting the pause button. There are only strange faces around you. In-flight entertainment provides only brief distractions. You anxiously glance at your smartphone, thinking of everyone back home.
But there’s no connection.