Made it home yesterday afternoon. I did not go online once yesterday, which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, never happens. But, we spent the day "getting home", and once we got home we had Mom and Aunt Barbara here, so we spent the day chatting with them and looking at pictures and such. Then there were the animals: the dog was beside himself with wiggling, slobbering dog-joy, of course; and once the cat had forgiven us and made us suffer for a bit, she needed all of her attention too. Mark left a while ago to bring the ladies back to Saugus, so the house is blessedly quiet for the first time since I got home.
Never did get around to writing that story. Not enough "idle hours" at the resort, and a laptop is hardly the accessory one wants while riding in an innertube. I thought I might try something on the trip home, but we ended up having the most extraordinary flight on Wednesday.
The plane was a McDonnell-Douglas with a capacity of roughly 150-250 people, I would guess. There were 25 souls aboard that flight, which was probably the primary reason why the flight was so pleasant in the first place. Once we got past the torturous vetting process of being allowed back into the US, the entire process was not only painless, I might even go so far as to say pleasant. Everyone had their pick of seats, and once everyone was snack'ed and beverage'd, the flight attendants grabbed some food from First Class and relaxed in the rear, which was cool. The baby only cried once. The air was smooth as silk, hardly a bump from takeoff to landing, and we were ahead of schedule.
There are advantages to being someone, like me, who lives largely inside of his own head. This allows you to have almost transcendental moments in the most unlikely of places, even somewhere like on an airplane in mid-flight, where ordinarily you would be cramped, aching, quite possibly nauseous, and wondering if anyone has ever really ordered a $350 briefcase from SkyMall.
We were flying due north, and Mark and I were stretching out in an exit row directly over the wings. The weather had been beautiful all day. I had finished my last book that morning, so my iPod was playing and I had been admiring the clouds and thinking how they looked like giant kernels of exploded popcorn from that angle. At sunset, the sun was exactly at the tip of the wing out to the west. I took some pictures but no matter how many megapixels I have, nothing could capture the magnificence of it. A mysterious landscape of white below, a blaze of red and searing yellow at the horizon, and sapphire blue above, fading into grayscale as night took over. Mumford and Sons was playing on my iPod as I watched the sun slowly dissolve away. Could there be a better band than Mumford and Sons for that moment? "Awake my soul..." At that moment, I could look below at the landscape. The pilot was flying us right up the coast of the United States, and when I looked down, I could see exactly where we were. I recognized the Chesapeake Bay and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and I knew that the cluster of lights to the west was Baltimore, my home town, and I knew my brother and his family were there, and the souls of my Mom and Dad. I waved.
The iPod shuffled to James Galway playing a concerto for flute by Bach. As I looked down, I was able to see whole neighborhoods pop into view from the growing darkness as all their streetlights came on at once, crazy Lite-Brite pictures drawn by civil engineers. I had one of those moments when you remember how small and insignificant you really are. I realized how the guy felt when he composed the theme song from "Arthur": "caught between the moon and New York City."
And before I knew it, there it was, New York City, and we were landing at JFK. Our Dream Flight had ended. We all smiled and deplaned and re-assumed our roles as red blood cells in the throbbing circulatory system of Air Travel. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did, but I doubt they did.
Anyway, so that's why I haven't gotten the story written.
It's nice to be home.
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