A Week in the Life: Letters Unsent Saturday

Posted on May 27, 2012 by

Back in Manhattan:

My life in the States is comparatively less glam than my life abroad.  Not that the real-time elements of travel are particularly sexy — because when you are living them, I will admit that they are interesting, but they are also extremely mundane.  However, my life in Ordinary Time is sometimes extraordinary too.

(Ordinary woman.  Ordinary home.  Ordinary Saturday.)

Someone once asked me whether I thought I had more of a social life outside of the States because I didn’t have any of my day-to-day cares.  And that’s probably part of it.  When I’m in London, I can go out with my friends, and not have to worry about being home to walk the dog.  Someone calls me to wake me up.  Even if I get to work late, I’m still five hours ahead of New York.  My friends are typically excited to see me.  But since there is distance between us, there isn’t that sense of feeling left-out when I’m not around; of life going on without me when I leave.

I do not feel the same icky competition, or brutality of place when I’m on travel.

London, in particular, is not crushing in the same way New York can be.  Cold, irritating, expensive.  It might greet you with contempt or disdain.  It might reject you.  But it lacks the outright meanness of Manhattan.

Anyway.

Because I was tired when I got home, I somehow missed that my floor in my apartment building had acquired a new resident.  How could I have missed that?

On our floor, we have a bit of a competition going with regard to our doormats.  When the Preppy Couple with the Yappy Daschund moved in about 18 mos ago, they bought a nice, greek key coir door mat.  (Don’t let their moniker fool you, I adore these people — their dog is just…a bit much.)  I was intimidated by this, so I immediately stepped up and bought my own nice coir doormat.  Then, about six months ago, the beautiful but utterly peculiar woman next-door moved in, and I came home one day to find she’d bought a thick, gorgeousmonogrammedcoir doormat.

OWNED.

This would all sound crazy and imagined by me, if I hadn’t one day had a conversation with the female half of Preppy Couple about this very subject.

What is she trying to do with the Monogrammed Mat? Preppy Girl had said, Even Preppy Husband and I are not that pretentious!

When you live in a Manhattan pre-war mid-rise, you don’t exactly have rosebushes and flowerbeds to tend to keep-up-with-the-Joneses.  So this is what you do:  You get competitive about who has the nicer doormat.  (Don’t even get me started on the wreaths at Christmas.  Even the Jews put up wreaths, and bedazzle them with little dreidls.)

So this is where we were.  Everyone knew the rules of the game.  Until…this:

(Not sure this photo fully demonstrates the proportions of the monstrosity)

Bless her heart.  What the hell was she doing?  Was she from Texas?  Was she thinking “Bigger is always better”?  That was not a doormat — that was an area rug.

I found this both hilarious and infuriating.  I had tripped on it on my way to the lift — the new resident lived right next to the elevator opening.  And everyone knows that I am perfectly awful at being jetlagged, which made the situation all the worse.

In my addled state, I momentarily contemplated leaving this girl a note.  But what would the note say?  Should I stick with a short, sweet: Your doormat is too large.  Consider replacing this area rug with a regulation-sized doormat.

But what if I was wrong and there was no such thing as a regulation-sized doormat?  Did I even care about being wrong?  I was a lawyer.  Lawyers made their living off of bending facts to suit them.  Should I not leave the “regulation-sized” thing open to interpretation, and instead give her size parameters?

Was I just being jetlagged and bitchy?

You be the judge:

Girl With the Area Rug For the Doormat — get yourself something that people aren’t going to trip over.  You’re taking up the entire hallway.  Manhattan is a mean place, sweetie, and you’ve got to keep up with the Preppies and the International Woman of Mystery and the Beautifully Strange Woman in 7F.

But seriously, you guys.  That thing is huge.  And actually, quite dangerous.

And that’s the story of how jetlag makes me the most unpleasant person in the whole entire world.

THE END.

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A Week in the Life: Friday – Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Posted on May 25, 2012 by

Again, I woke up late.  By which I mean, 10am.  I’d been arguing with The Englishman until late, about the stupid car thing.

Why my opinion mattered to him was beyond me.

Just buy your Aston Martin and admit you’re having a mid-life crisis!

His picture of life-in-the-ideal gave me a sad laugh.  I looked forward to meeting the 25 year old he eventually married.

Anyway, my waking up late was no impediment to starting my day.  I’d noticed that there was a sort of laissez-faire-ness to the Spanish lifestyle, which I sort-of admired.  I was my father’s daughter in the land of my mother.  Literally.

I had a round of meetings set for mid-morning on Friday.  Since it was the end of the week, and I’d been in suits for days, I had reached business dress-overload.

My concession to formality was to put on a blazer over a sundress.

My main meeting was great (the taxi ride over, less so, as the driver read the paper as he drove!).  It was at one of the buildings I’d been at the night before — where the Georgetown Europe alumni had hosted a cocktail party.  The Spaniards, with their easy-going ways, had left the cleanup for the morning.

(Note the party remainders; wine goblets!)

The meeting ended and I sat outside, until the mid-day sun was too hot and I retreated to lunch.

(Notice that the olives are untouched — I am allergic.  Careful eating in Spain was a must!)

In the late afternoon, I headed for the airport.  While Spain was lovely, I’d had a ridiculously productive week — I’d been working US and European hours.  It had been one of the busiest weeks in recent memory.  Hong Kong had been busy, but this week made that one look like amateur hour.

I was approaching my limit.

My driver arrived and took me back to Barajas Airport, where I changed into jeans (flying in a short dress is not fun); checked in; waited for assistance.  This was where the Spanish laissez-faire thing became not so charming.  After 25 minutes of waiting for the fellow who was supposed to assist me, I sat sitting and staring out over the railing down at baggage claim until I’d had enough.  I decided to go for my gate myself.

But I wanted to go to the “VIP Lounge” first and send some emails.

Upon entry, I was told I had to go to the “R-S-U” gates, which were 40 minutes away by train.  My flight boarded in about that same amount of time.  This was getting ridiculous.  There were no signs in Spanish OR English to direct me, and the Lounge staff was not helpful.

Whatever.

I was exhausted.  I had one working foot.  I decided to do as the Spanish did — I decided I was largely unconcerned about any of what was to come. I wandered the airport.  I sent a series of ranty text messages.  I didn’t much care about the consequences.

In my wanderings, I came across a home goods store.  Right in the entry, there they were — two perfect tin penguins.  Immediately, I knew I had to have them.  I wasn’t sure whether they really matched my home decor at all.  I bought them anyway.

As it happens, some penguins mate for life; some for only a breeding year; most are monogamous.  (Ironically, so are wolves; vultures; albatrosses; termites.  The things that are scary and strange — at least they have each other.)  I love penguins.  I love the idea of their fidelity; flexibility; their strange and mysterious habitats and ways.

But I didn’t have much time to contemplate that.  I was approaching: late for my flight status.

So I continued to wander through the airport, desperately seeking gates R-S-U.  Searching for a train.  While most people commonly associate existentialism with the French, there was a weird element of waiting for, seeking things that simply weren’t going to happen or appear as I step-together-stepped through Barajas Airport.

Eventually I found my gate.  And I was off for JFK.

I wound up in conversation with my seatmate — an sixtysomething year-old man from New York, on his way back from…Ibiza.  He was Mike Tyson’s former manager; retired from boxing promotion and back in the music business.  He’d started in music; promoted some of the biggest concerts in the US back in the ’70s.  He’d just come from hanging out with David Guetta and his wife.

You’re totally talking to the wrong person, I laughed, I barely know who that is.

We talked about life; our respective careers; our families.  He’d been married for 36 years and had three beautiful, successful children.  He spoke with loving admiration about his wife.  We talked about my divorce; my terrible taste in partners.

I think you’ll get married again, he said, In fact, I have great faith in it.

I rarely talked to men who were still on their first wives — and if they were, they weren’t usually so happy.  Then again, I typically talked to people on planes, and I’d found that unhappy people usually hit the road to ease the discomfort.

What was I running from?

I contemplated this over my Spanish “vegetarian” lunch:

We landed in New York, and my seatmate and I went our separate ways.  I was glad to have talked to him for most of the flight.

There had been so many questions over the years about fidelity — mine; that of others.  And I’d had to think so much about what I wanted.  What did all of it mean?  All I knew was this:

The angels were singing somewhere.  These moments were blessings in disguise — and it wasn’t for me to know yet what they were or what they meant.  Nothing made sense, nor did it have to.  Answers would come in due course — in the proper time; just as I was coming back to life.

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A Week in the Life: Thoughts from Thursday

Posted on May 24, 2012 by

I woke up late (again) to sunlight streaming through the sheers of my hotel in Madrid.  I’d cracked the window open the night before, and the morning sounds from the street were wafting up into my room.

It was still early.  By which I mean 830a.  By which I mean, the crack of dawn for Madrid.

I dressed by the natural light; scurried down to the Lobby to a waiting taxi.  I was off to a conference (the subject of it would bore you to tears, but it’s the sort of thing I get fired up about…remember…”Dramatic Drachmas”).  The event was being held at a Spanish law firm’s new headquarters, and their building was Apple Store-like in its use of glass and dark stone.  The Madrid sun filled the glass enclosure and turned the cavernous space into a veritable greenhouse.

I was thrilled.

I laid eyes on a friend of mine who gave me a big friendly hug.  I am sometimes struck by the nature of hugs.  I always joke about not being a touchy person, but when in Spain, do as the Spanish do.  There were hugs; kisses; familiar greetings.  It was…nice.

At some point, I got talking to the deputy general counsel of a big American corporation.  He was German, married to an American; they were based in Geneva.  We talked about my injury; about getting around on crutches; about the nature of the beast of being involuntarily slowed down.

You’ll find the blessing in this, he assured me, And it will be remarkable.  Your guardian angel is looking out for you.

It was a funny thing to say, a striking one.  (And admittedly, the somewhat spiritual overtones of the comment might have seemed completely out of context if the conference hadn’t been sponsored by our Jesuit law school).   The comment resonated especially because my mother always said things like that she felt that my grandparents were with me and my brother all the time.  My grandmother had died six years ago last weekend — the same day I’d hurt myself — and she was, in fact, Spanish.

(Her birthday is Friday.  She’d have been 99.)

The whole exchange reminded me of a line from a song I used to love, and listened to on repeat during many a transition time in my life.  The refrain went:

…And keep me guessing with these blessings in disguise
And I’ll walk with grace my feet and faith my eyes…

These incidents and accidents, where they just ordinary blessings in disguise?  Was this grace?

The day and the conference ended and after cocktails with friends, I did some work then had dinner under the stained glass dome of my hotel.  It was so beautiful — all of it — Madrid; the people; the food; the crystal, and glass, and the light of day fading in the painted panes of the ceiling above me.

It struck me, then, that there were angels dining somewhere, just maybe not at The Ritz.  Though ironically, I’d swapped my hotel reservation from Hotel Ritz in Madrid to the Palace just the day before.  Maybe I was walking away from fate — but maybe, unbeknownst to me — broken, human, humbled, I was slowly limping right into it.

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A Week in the Life: Ode to a Wednesday

Posted on May 23, 2012 by

I am slowly coming back to life… I wish someone were in love with me like boys were ages ago before I was sick. I suppose it will be years, though, before I could think of anything like that. – “Tender is the Night,” F. Scott Fitzgerald

It has been a year now since Miss Mal and I sat at a Thai dinner in London, then stared at each other over a nightcap before then being convinced out to a nighty-nightcap at a nightclub. We had, over dinner, done the difficult work of viewing hard things from near, after having looked at them from faraway. And we had decided, then, what was wheat, and what was chaff, and what was worth getting into a taxi with strangers over.

The aforementioned taxi, and our benefactors (and by association, we) sped across the city, and as we crossed a certain part of Mayfair, Miss Mal trilled in her sweet soprano:

I may be right, I may be wrong,
But I’m perfectly willing to swear
That when you turned and smiled at me,
A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

And that was how last summer began: with a bang, and a whimper, and Bobby Darin cum Miss Mal in my ear, and Adele on the radio singing Someone Like You, with Frederic marrying in precisely the manner I’d predicted years before.

What exquisite heartbreak!

On this week last year, all that happened, then I left London the following bank holiday Monday, sobbing all the way to Heathrow, for no apparent reason.

(In the present day, my leaving London was on a Wednesday, and my destination was not New York, but Madrid. I had been lost last May, a native daughter of nowhere. And now, found — an international woman of mystery.)

As last summer grew warm, I had lunch one day with a particularly opinionated friend. For instance, it perplexed her that I had ever married Andrew or loved Frederic and she had no problem saying so.

You always go for the Dick-and-Nicole scenarios!

Diver?

Duh.

That was a first. The implication that I was crazy in a cosmopolitan-Swiss sanitarium-baby bird-to-phoenix sort of way was both deeply disturbing and utterly intriguing.

I mean, you’re pure Nicole – your neuroses come for a very different reason, of course. And your men have got that sadsack Dick thing down pat. Get away from the narcissists.

I considered her crazy statements before moving on. Then our lunch continued without further literary allusion.

But by last August, I was back in London for the umpteenth time, exhausted; bored of the British boys who didn’t understand an international vocabulary and dry wit on an American girl. The locals were rioting even in Notting Hill; the markets were crashing. All gods were dying; all wars were being fought; I was kissing cads in the lobby of the hotel that practically backed on to Berkeley Square.

As far as I could tell, there were no angels dining at the Ritz, and the nights were anything but tender.

The denouement-into-ending in a Fitzgerald book always came fast and furious, and left someone unsatisfied at the end. In poetry, it was always love or death — sometimes, just a little love, or heaven help us, la petite mort. With songs, however, one learned to be suspicious.

By Fall and Winter, the leaves had fallen, and the birds had stopped singing. After the New Year, as if to compensate, I debated paint choices at home in New York and, sick one Saturday, chose for the bathroom”Nightingale” over “Silver Fox.”

But in context, the night bird and the fox were one and the same.

Meanwhile, back in present day London, I’d spent the early part of this week at my usual hotel that practically backed on to Berkeley Square. Everything was the same as a year prior. It was mostly me that was different.

(Topsy, turvy; seen through a taxi.  Typical.)

My week was jammed; my exit from London hurried.  My driver took me to yet another meeting, and then back to Heathrow — but not my usual way.

In fact, the opposite of my ordinary way out of town.

As I finally got to the airport with no Adele; no Bobby Darin this time, it was like slowly coming back to life.  London had been hot and sunny, just like it had been this week a year prior — we’d been spared a British summer for just one week.

We drove, and I remembered parks, and sunshine, and ice pops in the summery weather.  But that bit was done.  Over.  I left London without tears.

Madrid awaited me.

What was I doing with all these narcissists?

The day prior, I’d mentioned to a friend that in a fit of fear, I’d drafted a list of things I wanted in a partner.  He’d asked what it said, and I told him.  The items on the list were ordinary; expected.  But they were the items a woman emerging from a dream might’ve written — so clear and simple that only someone who’d spent the last few years in a state of shock might need to be so obvious with herself about what was right and wrong.

I exited the plane and was whisked through Barajas Airport by a helper.

It had been a year since that transformative week in London.  But it was over.  Had it been a vision, or a waking dream?  It all seemed very surreal:  the wheat, the chaff; the good, the bad; the selfish, treacherous men.

Out of London, in the hot Spanish sunshine, I was slowly coming back to life.

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A Week in the Life: Treacherous Tuesday

Posted on May 22, 2012 by

I nearly didn’t wake up on time.  I was saved by a ping — my American mobile phone beeping and buzzing with successive text messages.  It was Tink, updating me on plans and logistics for an upcoming visit.   But it was 430am London time, and it was 830pm Los Angeles time.  I needed to wake up for a flight to Amsterdam.

Thank GOD you messaged me, I said, I slept through my alarms.

Well, add me to the list of people who call you to wake you up for flights, she said.  I could hear the chuckle in her voice, even through a text message.

I was running behind, again.  I dragged myself out of bed and stuffed myself into a suit.  I shouldn’t admit that I again didn’t wash my hair.  But I didn’t.  Have I mentioned that I have a really great dry shampoo?  Klorane and a chignon to the rescue.

(Why does that updo look so…Ivana Trump in that photo?  Did it look that way all day?  I don’t know.)

With that, I was off for Amsterdam for a meeting.  It sounds very jetset, doesn’t it?  London; Amsterdam.  In reality, it was exhausting.  By that point, it was approximately 5am; I had slept for perhaps seven hours out of 48; I hadn’t washed my hair in two days.

Oh, and I was on crutches.  All very sexy.

I made my way to Heathrow. My assistant was appalled that I’d ventured from New York to London without special assistance, and she’d arranged for helpers and wheelchairs at every stop for the rest of my trip.

(En route to LHR.  Ironically, the shoes seem to be a shade of “Dramatic Drachmas.”)

I don’t know how to take in help — how to ask for it; what to do with it when it’s given to me.  This trip was proving to be a steep learning curve.  It was so busy; so intense; not a good time to be less than 100%.  But it seemed I could be 120% if I just accepted the assistance being offered.  Imagine that.

The flight to AMS was uneventful.

I arrived in one piece, and was whisked through the airport to a waiting driver, who spirited me off to my meeting.

My meeting was in a beautiful old building, right on one of the central squares, across from the Rijksmuseum.  Sometimes, I travel and I don’t even see the cities in which I’ve been.  I’ve been to Amsterdam a number of times, and I’ve barely seen the city at all.  But on Tuesday, the weather was gorgeous, and the windows of the boardroom were open to the square.

We had our meeting, then lunched along the canals.  It was truly a treat.  But it made me late for my return to the airport for a flight back to London.  Thankfully, I was getting a wheelchair.

Except the special assistance/transport department were shortstaffed.  Which made me even later.

Eventually, they assigned me an insane Dutch woman, who took her job of getting me to my gate very seriously.  Time was getting small.  We only had a rickety airport wheelchair and our joint will, until she got the bright idea to commandeer one of those airport golf carts to get me to my destination.

I kid you not.  I wish I could have taken photos of this.

At Schipol Airport, staffers leave little notes on the carts indicating who has the cart reserved and for when.  My transporter ripped one of the notes off the cart, dramatically tore the note up, and we sped away towards gate D28.

Problem:  our hot wheels didn’t have one of those pitiful beepy horns like you always hear at SFO, or LGA.  Solution:  My helper SCREAMED at people instead.  Granted, she said, “Please get out of the way” or “Pardon!”  Nonetheless, I am pretty sure we were doing about 25mph as we tore through the terminal.

She may have even had that thing up on two weeks at one point.

An important thing to note here — the transport professional (i.e., my new Dutch friend) — has to sort of clip the wheelchair on to the back of the cart so she can move the passenger from the cart to the plane.  Except in my case, we were too busy Evil Kenievel-ing off to the D Gates to notice that the damned wheelchair had fallen off the cart.

So that happened.

Eventually, we arrived at my gate where my transporter discovered that the wheelchair was gone.  She became unreasonably upset about this.  Someone else might have asked whether I would be okay to walk; maybe apologised.

No, gentle readers.  The woman proceeded to try to lift me and carry me to the pre-boarding waiting area at the gate.  I was so startled, I didn’t try to stop her.  When I recounted the story to my girlfriends immediately after it happened, the only sympathy I got was that Strand asked: Did she carry you like a baby or fireman style?

Leave it to the Women of Winesday…

(For the record, it was like a baby.  Like a bride.)

So.  That happened.

I left Amsterdam, and all of that weird behind me and headed back to London for an hour or two in the office, and then a business dinner.  What a ridiculously long day!

At the end of the day, I crawled into bed, convinced that British Airways had single-handedly given me at least fifty grey hairs that day alone.


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A Week in the Life: Manic Monday

Posted on May 21, 2012 by

I arrived in London relatively unscathed.  I always do.

(I think I have about 12 dozen photos of my feet snapped at immigration at Heathrow.)

The driver met me and we sped off to Central London. By “sped,” I mean, “we sat in traffic for two hours” while I moaned and complained about a rapidly-approaching meeting.  My friend The Englishman was also coming in from the States (though on a flight from Boston, arriving an hour later than mine) and I texted to let him know there was traffic.

This is worse and farther-reaching than the usual Hammersmith Flyover BS, I reported.

Should I cancel my car and take the train?  he asked.

Don’t bother.  It’ll probably all work out the same.

Well, hopefully you’re seeing the worst of it, he replied.  He was kind like that; possibly he had no filter.  This was He of the Prospective Super Luxury Car Purchase, after all.

Finally, we were close(ish) to my destination.

Which then turned out to be not close at all, because I spent 30 mins in traffic one block away from where I was supposed to end up due to a massive traffic jam.  Under ordinary circumstances, I’d have gotten out and walked.  However, the crutch, the suitcase, the endless construction, and the high quality of the Mayfair sidewalks made that impossible.

I finally made it to my  hotel to change.  I had 20 mins.  I texted a friend in a timezone where humans were awake:  What are the odds of me getting away with wearing a t-shirt to these meetings?

The reply was mildly snarky.

I went with unwashed hair; an unpressed suit; a t-shirt.

You may critique my choice of heels.  Let’s break this one down.  First: they are my beloved Cole Haan Nike Air peep-toes, and are very comfortable.  Second: I sprained the arch of my foot/likely tore a tendon or a ligament therein.  I didn’t hurt my ankle or achilles.  Third: I have unreasonably high arches.  Wearing flats under these circumstances is considerably more painful on this injury than wearing the shoes pictured.  Fourth:  I have a few pairs of heels that are so high they are inappropriate for everyday wear, and I know that I shouldn’t wear them while injured.  The heels I am wearing are very conservative, with a wide heel, and a lot of arch support.

The point being, when you next injure yourself, you can make choices about your footwear.  Your right to make choices aboutmyfootwear, however, happens only if and when I am a bridesmaid in your wedding — and even then, that right is pretty circumscribed.

On my way to my first meeting, I was taken by the decorations in the Mayfair streets.  There was something romantic about it to me.

I made it through a day of meetings; appointments; calls; firedrills; frantic matters.  The intensity of everything astounded even me.  Then it was off to a bar I love to meet PG and, later, the Englishman, for drinks and snacks.  PG came over first, so we ordered some terrific food.

This is a terrible; blurry photo, and does no justice to my fave photo app — IncrediBooth.  It’s like a photo booth for your iPhone.

PG had convinced me to order Eton Mess for dessert.  I’d never had it before, but it consists of meringue; whipped cream; berries.  Like a pavlova, almost, but more delicious.  Heaven in a dessert glass.  I had to take a call in the middle of the puddingy delight, though, and PG — sneaky bastard — coopted the remainder of the treat!

The Englishman joined us as we finished the glass of berries and cream.  PG, for reasons unbeknownst to me, began flipping through pictures on his phone of his blisters and wounds.  I had to turn away.  Then PG left, and The Englishman and I were left alone for a few glasses of wine.

It was strange, really.  We’d found ourselves that way with increasing frequency: every few weeks, it was the two of us over dinner; us over drinks.  Sometimes in London; once over the round table in my house.  But it begged the question, again, that I had been asking for a year now:  Was Levi-Strauss correct?  In an encounter between two cultures, did you really have to find the right distance in order to get to know each other?

I still didn’t know.

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A Week in the Life: Sunday – One Freak on Foot

Posted on May 20, 2012 by

I loved writing the “Week in the Life” posts last year.  And I love the idea of the project.  I’ve loved Sarah Rosemary’s posts.  I’m just not a scrapbooker; I don’t aspire to be one.  I do, however, compulsively document my life and always have…just, in other media besides paper and stickers.

Given the nature of this week, however, it seemed as good a week for a Week in the Life as any.

I left New York on Sunday after injuring my foot at the Brooklyn Half Marathon.  I called the injury a “freak accident.” The idea of such an accident made me think of that George Carlin routine; something to the effect of: The other day I saw a freak accident — three freaks in a van collided with two freaks in a station wagon.

But this was one freak on foot.  Rather, Freak on one foot.

Before leaving for the airport, I had to clean out my wallet.  I’d tried paying at Starbucks in Hong Kong Dollars so many times in the last month, it was time to clean the damned thing out anyway.  I’d bought the purple purse with a mind to organise currencies and have proper pockets and slots for avoiding the (rookie) mistakes I’d been making for years now.  Mindfulness, Meredith.

The shade on my nails is called “Dramatic Drachmas,” which, for a girl who works in finance, is actually quite un-funny.  For about twenty minutes at the nail salon, I thought it was hilarious — both to paint my nails some colour other than plain, old Essie “Mademoiselle” or “Ballet Slippers,” and to make a bold statement about the European sovereign debt crisis and the potential breakup of the Eurozone.

You know, because that’s totally what I was doing.  In nail polish.

Once I ditched the HKD and RMB, I set about sorting through the Euros and Sterling in my change tray:

The Australian dollars in there always throw me off.  I’m still not sure why I just tossed them in.  Notice, also, my beloved perfume tray.  The inscription in Hebrew — I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine — is the most glorious thing.  So important to remember.  It was the most beautiful wedding gift, though I never saw it as a wedding gift — I always thought of it as a gift to me.  The family friend who gave it pulled me aside and asked if I would be offended; weirded out by the very Jewish nature of it at a Catholic wedding.

Of course not, I said.  I was so grateful.  The tray is one of my most prized possessions.

Once the currency sorting was complete, I packed and was on my way.  I asked my doorman to snap a photo of me on my way out.

I can do this.

I made my way to JFK.  Is that the space shuttle in the hangar?  The thing says NASA!

(Can you see the nose cone peeking out?  Mysterious.)

For once, upon my arrival at the terminal, British Airways let me down.  The aircraft for my flight was a 747; my seat was upstairs.  They didn’t want to let me on the plane on crutches.

Well, that’s a bit like killing a fly with a sledgehammer, isn’t it? I said.  It would be one thing not to let me on the upper deck.  It was another thing not to allow me on the plane.  I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just switch my seat.  But they finally allowed me to board.  They’d put me in an aisle seat, which meant I couldn’t put my crutch near me — if I had to get up to use the toilet or something, I was out of luck.

Is this a very full flight? I asked the steward.  He affirmed that it was.  I wonder if the guy in the window seat will switch with me then?  I wondered this aloud.  The steward said I could ask.  In response to my wondering, said hypothetical guy’s wife turned out to be behind me, and she took that opportunity to jump down my throat.

My husband won’t switch with you, she snarked, We don’t sit together because we both always sit in window seats.  Don’t you even stress him out.

A small melee ensued when Hypothetical Windowseat Guy appeared and informed in me no uncertain terms that he never changed seats with anyone and then called me some names because I’d even dared to make a request of him (which I never actually made.  I just wondered aloud if Hypothetical Windowseat Guy might make the trade).

That was why New York had rubbed me raw.  There were so many angry people; so many furious men; so many uncharitable women.  I supposed it was true of any city, but in New York, people felt free to let their rage hang loose.  I wanted, in that moment, to be in England as quickly as possible, or even back in Hong Kong.

But the steward got us settled and I accepted my aisle seat fate.

The flight got underway without further ado, and I fell into a restless sleep — my weird dreams harbingers of what would undoubtedly be a wacky week to come.

Posted in Adventures, musings, My Life in Airports, On the road again | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment