to depart, and to follow the dreams of my heart

I want to write a nice long post about all the million things that have happened, but I’ve slept very little and the room keeps tilting like a sailboat that’s tacking every thirty seconds (or a plane circling an airport…) so I’m just going to type out some of what I wrote in my journal.

On the plane to Detroit

So, then, here I go. My backpack is four or five rows away, jammed in the overhead compartment, due to an insistent flight attendant who I didn’t feel like arguing with. But I got moved to a first class window seat, so I’m not really complaining. A rather agitated middle-aged man – grey-haired athletic build sophisticated businessman type – wanted to switch with me so that he and his son could sit together. On reflection, he rather spoke to me as though I was a peasant. He asked if I’d like to sit in first class, then when I said “sure,” he said something that I wish I could remember. If it was a long time ago he would have said, “Well, go along then, girl.”That was the sort of tone it was.

Oh! The plane is moving! I’m not nervous this time, the way I was when we flew for Greece, only very excited. This begins the adventures of Joanna, Lumpy, and a very small dragon named Wyvner. Wyvner is one of the two main reasons that I am annoyed by the absence of my backpack, the second being that my proper journal is in it as well, so I’m having to write in the tiny notebook I had in my purse. However, first class has distinct advantages – such as peanuts and really good cinnamon cookies.

At first my mind couldn’t perceive how high we were, as we were going up. So all the houses and trees and rivers looked miniature. It was a shock to realize that what I first thought was a field of furzy weeds was a wood! Now that we’re all the way up I have my perspective again.

Everything below is shades of brown and white, as though it was an old movie.

On the plane [which is supposed to be going] to New York

We are delayed.

“Joanna! I want to come out of this container!”

“Okay, okay. But nothing’s happening.” [That was Wyvner.]

The stewardess said that “the plane arrived with a small mechanical problem.” I do not find this especially comforting. I also am afraid I am going to be sitting in this plane not moving for ages.

They told us when we were waiting to board that it would be an hour delay. So far they’re sticking with that estimate. It’s going to be a little tight to make my London flight, but the reaccommodations desk gave me information for the next flight just in case.

[This is Wyvner on the windowsill. Outside the window is the plane that we were waiting to board.]

I got rather sick of walking around the Detroit airport and my stuff seems very heavy. I thought maybe I had to get my checked luggage (I’ve never done this before, you know) but I didn’t’ and then I had to go back through security. And I could have just ridden the skytram or whatever it’s called.

There was a bird inside the airport, a sparrow. I wondered how it got in and how it will get out. If I didn’t have so much to carry, I’d have gone back after I got my food to find it and feed it.

There were three men talking in the same row of chairs as me while we waited. Businessmen, but not self-important. One had an English accent. He told me about how there used to be a direct flight from Detroit to London once a day. I loved hearing the way he said “London”.

They just said it would be an additional 40 minutes. It’s going to be cutting it awfully close.

I’m so glad I’m flying out of New York instead of Atlanta. “New York to London” is the most fun thing to say.

Wyvner is missing an ear, a toe, and the end of his tail. He says he doesn’t mind the ear and the toe, but he wants me to glue is tail when we get to England.

And now we have to switch planes.

“I don’t like it in that case.”

“I know, I know. But I can’t just leave you out. Do you want to lose another ear?”

Now I’m on the new plane. Planned departure 5:10pm, two hours late. My mother called to say that the airline called and I’m now moved to the 8:55 out of New York. She’s messaged Jan to let her know.

I met a woman who is travelling to Egypt for two weeks. She looks the sort of person to be going there – tallish, slim, dark-haired, with a narrow nose and pointed chin, dark eyes, and a makeupless but not inelegant face.

Another small delay. The wrong paperwork is on the plane and someone has to go get the right papers.

Two people are playing craps. I like the sound of the rattle and roll. I picture the dice being brightly coloured even though I can’t see them.

I’m thankful that I had the bright idea of putting the things I actually wanted for the flight into my Tinkerbelle bag, so my backpack can be stored above but I still have the things I need handy. Wyvner is pleased that he is one of the things I need. He smiles that same pleased smile that Bram does.

On the flight to London

I’m in such a fog. I expect because I’m sleepy, starving, listening to a constant loud roar, and am in an entirely new situation. I didn’t have any time to get my bearings – or eat – in New York. I had just time to use the bathroom, figure out where to go (gate 5), get there, and board the plane.

Waiting for the shuttle, I met a lovely couple from Lebanon who spoke French. They were in their late fifties/early sixties. The wife was so funny. It kept making me laugh to hear her complain in an indignant French accent,

“Thee plane, it smells terreeble. Like urine! They do not clean it – no! That is why thee people get sick when they travel – it is thee viruses on thee plane! He [her husband] tells me, ‘Do not talk to her [the flight attendant],” but I do talk to her – I tell her! It is not clean!”

I am going to meet the sun – it is going around the other side of the world. “You go that way, I’ll go this way.”

I saw the three men again, waiting for the shuttle. “Hey, I remember you!” said the one with the British accent. He wished me “Bon voyage” when I got off the shuttle.

[Here is the inside of the plane.]

Still on the flight to London, four hours later

“So many sights to see, so wake up like an early birdie, and we’ll get a head start on the day…”

I woke up, and I could see half a moon, and just make out that there was something below us. As the sun came up, I could see that it was cloud – so far down! And to think, the ocean even farther below that! Like the mountains beyond the sun in The Silver Chair, except that we were the height of the cirrus clouds, not way above them.

The sun rose, and the field of wrinkly-swirly clouds all lit up pink.

Land ho! Oh, I can see Ireland!

I saw it, realized it was Ireland, and started to cry.

On the tube in London

The seeing England from the air, and the coming down, down, and to the ground, and being in London – it was just right.

I spent several terrifying minutes at the border entrance. It really should have occurred to me that what sounds daft to my friends and acquaintances is going to sound even more daft to a customs officer. I endeavored to focus on the soothingness of his British accent and stay calm while he asked me about two dozen suspicious questions. “Who are Jan and Jack?” “Have you met these people in person?” “Is your mom coming later?” “Do they have any children?” “Are they expecting you at work when you go back?” “Who is your family – your mom, your dad…?” This situation was not helped at all by the fact that I’ve lost my itinerary printout. I should have brought printouts of our Disney reservations to prove I have plans upon my return. It’s a really good thing I brought a printout of my messages with Jan, because he spent ages poring over them, asked me whether I was planning to leave the UK and come back in while on the trip, and then suddenly, without saying a word, stamped my passport and handed it to me. I wanted to run away fast before he changed his mind.

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This ends my journal excerpts. Lots more things happened after that, but, like I said, the room is tilting, and it turns out that the journal entries have made this quite long enough. I have just one more thing to add, and I’ll write the rest of things tomorrow…

You know how you picture something or someplace, and you imagine what it’s like and how it looks and all, but then when you get there or when it happens it’s just not as wonderful or not like you thought it would be? I was afraid that that would happen. That England would just look like here, and not be anything in particular.

But it doesn’t and it isn’t. It looks like England, and it is, decidedly, indisputably, England. Just exactly like I’ve imagined England my whole entire life.

Sometimes, back home, while driving or riding in a car, I would catch sight of a beautiful place – sometimes it was a section of a field, or it might be a little valley of trees, or a hillside full of ivy, or a stream with a perfect curve, or a just-right old tree, or a building that struck me as very beautiful. Not especially often, but once in a while, I would see these things, whether big views or tiny places, the ones that would make me say, “Oh! How lovely!’ softly to myself. There was some quality that these places had that made them very beautiful to me, and all in a sort of similar way.

All of England has that quality.