connecting

Airplane flights allow you to find a personal link between the world you leave behind and the one you’re returning to. I don’t hate them in the way most people seem to. For me, they offer time: essential time during which you can reconcile world one with world two. To figure out how you can take the best from one place and make it your own in the next.

Oh sure, there are, so often, miserable moments to flying. For instance, the ventilation wasn’t working for the first hour as we sat in the airplane in Paris (where we connected to Detroit and then eventually to Madison). The hot, still air felt more oppressive than the hottest hours in Ghana. The plane was full. Everyone sat in silence waiting for that magic moment when we could take in cool air again. The minutes dragged.

But most air travel is mundane, straightforward and therefore, a good time to close your eyes and think for a bit.

I did that. Flying up and over Barcelona.





Flying into Madison.






The next morning, I wake up at the farmhouse, look outside and see the beauty of a sunrise over an overgrown with grasses and weeds farmette.






Today, my arms ache from pulling and tossing. Returns to the condo were easy. To the farmhouse? Hard, yet beautiful.





The music in my head is Abba (so popular over European airwaves) but the memory of speeding on the twisted roads to La Franqui beach in France, listening to Dancing Queen is tempered by news then from home. I didn't mention it much in my posts, but it wasn't always good news. One thing I will always remember from this trip is being insanely happy one minute, then thinking I should be home for those who needed me to be home.