Arrival, The Arch, London
Missing Everything
It is Tuesday afternoon and I’m ten minutes away from grabbing my toothbrush, replacing contacts with glasses, double checking the ol’ passport and heading out the door.
And of course, what starts to creep up? That missing feeling. I start missing everything under the sun. First the obvious – Jorge, the dog, my dad, the farm, my sister, my family – and then all sorts of unexpected other things, one after the other as the missing feeling spreads like an ink stain over every part of my life. Miss familiar showers. Miss my day to day work routine even though I’m excitedly anticipating temporary liberation from it, miss the feel of whatever bed I’ve just slept in, miss a bus ride through the jungle a few years ago, a Sichuan restaurant we always used to go to in China, the morning view in Oaxaca of cold cloudy mountains, my sister’s house, bananas, the Columbus coffee shop I return to like a migrating bird every time I come home, the plod of a winter day in Columbus towards snow and evening. It all becomes part of this blur that I’m leaving behind.
I miss it all as if it were 1912 and I were cutting all ties with the known world to disappear into some jungle outpost for the next five years.
Dread seizes me and I wonder why in the world I keep doing this – why don’t you just start a garden, dammit, and read in the afternoons and cook delicious simmering things over the course of hours and go to bed and wake up in the same place? Why another departure, arrival, departure, arrival? Like the little kid who’s been waiting so expectantly for the birthday party and then, right when she stands on the stoop about to be swept up into the action, bursts into tears sobbing, “I don’t want to go!!! Let me go home, Mom!” I suddenly, at the last minute, always want to plant my feet and stay right where I am.
It’s the expression of that alternate side of my personality – I think most people have these yin/yang aspects of themselves, and in some people it’s more extreme than others. The Mexican/American sides in the case of my Mexican American friends. The traveling/rooted sides of so many long-term travelers. The driven, ambitious/herb-growing, crocheting, easygoing sides of academics and careerists I know. At critical moments both sides can emerge in sharp contrast. For me those moments are the pre-departure ones that come right after the last zipper has been zipped and right before I head out the door. Then I miss everything and want nothing more than to stay. But, feeling seasick and torn, I go.
Off and Running
One Paddington Express train, one black London cab and one stiff Americano later, I have arrived. I am in the library (which needs to be pronounced subtly skipping over that last “a” in utmost British sophistication) swimming in email after 12 hours of internet deprivation. We descended this morning through (what else?) fog, and all of a sudden I was in Europe again. Old, gray, quaint, hopelessly pretty and preserved where the U.S is in yer face NEW! BIG! It may seem a simple stereotype but really, leaving Chicago O’Hare is a depressing foray into Hooter’s billboards and massive Ikeas whereas taking the train from the airport here is a rumble past little brick homes that look like something out of, um, 19th century England.
Everything I know about England passed through my head in that slightly delirious descent following a sleepless night – the labor movement, the enclosure movement, coal, punks, class differences, immigrants and multiculturalism, literature that invokes trotting horses and mazes and downcast eyes, the sense of identity that comes from being an island. A new place and its dynamics, its landscapes, beginning to seep in.
The missing feeling has already dissolved into a combo of novelty, excitement and exhaustion, all of which I’m going to enhance tenfold with a run through Hyde Park. Now that the pendulum has swung back in the direction of wanderlust, well, I’m off and running.
10 Comments
Love the nostalgic tone to this post. The push and pull of travel. Well said.
Oh, I really like this post!! I really relate to this feeling of embedded contrasts, and it was so interesting hearing you talk about your desires to go/to stay.
How exciting. I hope you love your trip.
Beautiful juxtaposition Sarah. I agree with you. Some days I wake up in my bed at home and think that nothing could ever be better than that moment. I think that I don’t want to travel, that I want to be that predictable person with a routine. But then I remember all of the amazing things I’ve done and all of the things I have yet to do, and my mind turns a 180 in an instant.
Enjoy your time in London! You deserve it!
And yet here in the same place you too are missed… Have a wonderful time Sarah
Could you ask for a better park to run in? Enjoy!
Thanks for all the comments, everyone. Much appreciated. Am about to crawl into bed and sleep off some beastly jet lag.
I am SO glad you wrote this. So nice to know I’m not the only one who has doubts sometimes. I’m always torn…one minute I hate teh city, can’t wait to leave…the next I could stay forever. Makes me feel like a sham of a travel writer sometimes! Beautiful.
“But, feeling seasick and torn, I go.”
This was so…touching. Strange to use the word about a blog post, but it’s what comes to mind. So vulnerable, sweetly said, and recognizably true. Oddly enough, I think part of the reason we do depart is for that missing, that moment the tear happens and everything familiar is gone for a little while. It reminds us that we love and are loved, and that we are on a continual journey through the everyday. It awakens us to home so that we can travel there to.
Sidenote: Do you write poetry? If you do not, I think you should.
Excited to hear about your travels through the quaint, brick alleys. How did this opportunity come about? Was it something you applied for, or something that just fell into your lap? Good luck and have fun!
Sar – Thanks for such a well-written blog post. I have been trying to find a way to express my longing to be back home the second I step on the plane to leave home, and I have failed miserably. You captured it elegantly and beautifully in this post. I hope you are having a grand time in England – I am trying hard to relax here in Cancun without feeling that I have to move a mile a minute. I think it is those damn Menkedick genes, though, that just keep jumping up and down screaming “let’s go on a hike, let’s hunt for shells, let’s play volleyball!” I did enjoy a massage this morning and a dip in the jacuzzi eating dried bananas and almonds… heaven. I am anxious to see you on Monday night and hear all about the trip – maybe we can bake some yummy cookies as we talk about our trips! Love you babe! Mary
This, in essence, is the story of my life. I was just thinking this morning about performing, which I have been missing the last few days in a big way. And yet EVERY SINGLE TIME I perform, the day of, I always ask, “Why do I do this to myself? I hate taking two hours to get ready, I hate driving to the city, I hate waiting in a club late into the evening to perform, I hate the nervousness, I hate, I hate, I hate.”
But then the performance comes and goes in a minute, and mostly, all I want is to do it all over again.