Arriving and departing
The French say that to depart is to die a little. If so I must be on my ninth and final life, because I have just said goodbye to my best friend for the eighth time. She is a wonderful person with only one minor failing: she lives on almost exactly the opposite side of the world.
And so, every year I strap myself into an economy seat to spend over a full day in that strange netherworld that is not a place you want to be but forces itself to become a destination of its own for a while. It is a strange place, full of noise and vibration and unnatural lighting, where you can barely find a comfortable position.
Time passes differently inside an airplane. Instead of progressing linearly, it is as if you are recycling the same stale hour over and over while the oxygen slowly drains out of it, as around you the languid rhythms of meal service and trash collection mark the hours drifting by.
I do enjoy air travel but I have to admit that even for me the magic does not always outweigh the mundane discomfort. It might be a different matter if I were ever able to get some sleep, but despite having had a lot of practice, I manage to get at most an hour or so during the entire journey. No matter how clean-shaven and smartly dressed I am when I set off, I always arrive a disheveled mess.
When I finally make it through the miles of concrete corridors and endless queues and formalities and we find one another, all is forgotten. We pick up our conversation where we left off and it is as though I never departed at all.
"Welcome home", she says, because that's our little joke, that my home is really over there and for some reason I spend fifty weeks out of the year away in Europe. It's only barely a joke, as there is very little keeping me from emigrating except for some responsibilities bestowed upon me that I did not ask for and cannot get out of. One of life's little ironies.
The day of arrival is my favourite, because every option is still open. Nothing has been decided yet and there is plenty of time; we can do anything we want. In the following days time will start to accelerate, gradually narrowing the possibilities until only one day is left. Do we go to watch the sunset in our favourite spot by the ocean? Do we go for a scenic walk by the river? Or do we spend a quiet day inside and play with the cats? I'm in familiar surroundings and completely comfortable, but I won't be here tomorrow. The idea seems absurd for now.
Somehow I am now back at home, in the real world.
Until next year.