A stream-of-consciousness post that is only a little about 9/11, my mother, or travel...
So, it turns out that Frontier Airlines now offers half-bottles of wine. Since I’m about to spend eleven days helping my mom after surgery—once again—I thought I would treat myself to this. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to drink when I’m in Florida, as I’ll have to be able to drive at a moment’s notice. At the moment, I’m very carefully timing my wine consumption so as not to finish while there’s still a lot of flying left to do, but not leaving myself in the position of having to swig down a lot of remaining wine at the last minute, either.
The light outside is rapidly dimming as we fly from west to east, into what is already night on the Gulf Coast. The sky below is a blanket of clouds with the occasional columnar formation that is probably pounding a thunderstorm on the land below.
I could sit here and post something about how resentful I am that my mother demands my presence in these situations, or how much I despise myself for always giving in, or how I know I’ll spend at least five days cleaning a house that likely hasn’t seen any housekeeping since I last took on the challenge in January, or what a truly entitled, ungrateful, and demanding patient my mother is.
I don’t need to write about any of that because I’ve done it all before.
We may be flying over the Gulf now, but in the dusk, all I can see is an endless stretch of slate blue. In a few minutes, there will be no way to differentiate between up here and down there. It’s a great metaphor for how I feel much of the time.
Sometimes I think I want to tell you my name. Not my pen name, but my real name. I‘ve never liked my name very much, but it’s still mine and an important part of my identity. I try to share this concept with the refugees when I struggle to pronounce their names. When I ask, “Did I say it right?” it’s not unusual for someone to say, “No, but it’s OK. You can call me that.” That’s when I say, “No. It’s not OK. This is your name. You’ve come here with little else, and the least we can do here is get your name right.”
I still can’t sleep. Maybe that should have been the theme of this blog all along: May’s Insomnia. If anything, the situation has only gotten worse. On a good night, I get six hours of sleep, but never six hours in a row. I should be psychotic by now. Instead, I’m gaining weight and losing mood points. Always losing mood points.
My wine is almost finished, but there’s still an hour of flight time left. My alcohol consumption is outpacing this fine Boeing aircraft. Maybe it’s an Airbus. I didn’t really pay attention during the safety briefing.
OK, here’s something I’ve never told anyone. I always buy a cocktail on the plane, regardless of the time of day. I also always eat a two-pack of Resses’s Peanut Butter Cups. It’s my ritual. The ritual seems even more necessary tonight, when it’s September 10, just a day before September 11. I allow myself these treats when I fly because I don’t take commercial flight for granted.
When those planes crashed on September 11, my parents called me that night. They had never really embraced my change of profession from cable corporate superstar to social worker for the refugee population, but on that night my mother said, “We’re just so relieved you aren’t traveling constantly for work anymore. That could have been you. How many times have you flown out of Boston or toward DC, or over Pennsylvania? It so easily could have been you.”
Until she said that, I had not personalized the tragedy. She was right, though. I used to travel on a near-weekly basis when I was a corporate soldier. Ever since then, I have made a point to enjoy—truly enjoy—a cocktail on every flight, regardless of the hour, and to savor my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a true indulgence. If my plane ever goes down, damn it, I will go down having tasted pleasure and appreciated it on my tongue.
I usually fly Southwest. It was a bit of a jolt to get settled in and realize that Frontier doesn’t have onboard Wi-Fi. What the fuck? I’m composing this post in MS Word and I’ll upload it later. Still…Seriously, Frontier?
If they had WiFi, I’d have been on Twitter the whole time. Instead, I’m trapped here with a head full of thoughts because although I’m willing to pay $14 for a half-bottle of cheap chardonnay, I am too cheap to pay $5.99 for onboard television. It’s possible I’m trying to prove to myself that although I may have an alcohol addiction, I can still say no to television, goddamnit.
I tweet under my own name, or at least, something so close to it, there’s no actual masking my identity. About 100 people follow me on Twitter, and I’ve never figured that out, really. I only know six or seven of them. The rest? Who knows.
Are we there yet, are we there yet, arewethereyetarewethereyet?
No. We are not.
I wish I could sleep. I wish I could feel better about going to Florida. I wish a lot of things.
OK then. I am officially out of alcohol and attention span, but not flight time. Sigh.
There is one more thing I do when I fly, and it just occurred to me to share that, too. In the last 15 minutes of the flight, just before they tell you to turn off your electronic devices, I watch a video on my laptop. Yes, a video. It’s just as good and important as the cocktail and peanut butter cups. I watch the 2008 Matt Harding dancing video. It’s necessary.
I’ll try to write again tomorrow. I’ll be spending the day at Bayfront Hospital. See you then.
