It’s Christmas Eve, and I am at home. I can’t remember the last time this has been true. It’s been more than a decade, and probably closer to two. I’m usually down in California at this time of year, listening to the seasonal screams of my family while opening incomprehensible gifts from my mother. But nothing this year has been normal, and the holidays are no exception.

Recently, a dear friend told me that he was going to visit his family for the holidays. He’d been isolating, but they hadn’t been nearly as careful. They were planning an indoor dinner, and he was going to attend. There was an aging relative he wanted to see. Keeping my voice as steady as I could, I told him that it was his decision, but I didn’t think it was a wise one.

“It might be our last holiday together,” he said. I was only half-paying attention. Mostly, I was trying not to sputter like a coffee pot. The force of my own anger blindsided me. This holiday season has been the busiest stretch of travel since the pandemic began. Airports are packed with people.

Rand and I flying to see family for the holidays last year.

What if this is my last holiday with them? I’ve heard this refrain countless times this season – every time someone flouts CDC recommendations in order to visit family members. It’s a hard sell for me. I never spent a single holiday with my father, nor a birthday that I know of (if they did happen, I was too small to remember them). The closest we ever came is that one year, around 2005, that I went to Oktoberfest with him and my mother. (I realize that this is a very niche piece of travel advice, especially given that my father has been dead for four years, but still I offer it to you: do not go to Oktoberfest with my parents.) I’ve written a lot about my dad – how I struggled to accept him within the confines of who he was, the scarcity of the time we spent together. I have memories of him, and I pull them out on occasion when I want to sit in that space, in the cold, efficient, reliable austerity of who he was. I know that memory is a malleable thing, so I try not to do this often. What I remember of him sits on periphery of my mind, because I know if I look at it head on, it’ll change, or worse still, vanish altogether.

It’s strange to look like someone. To just to go around in the world with features you got from them.

The last time I saw him was years ago in a hospital room in Germany. It was not a holiday. It was not anyone’s birthday. I don’t even remember the exact date – I only know that I wondered if it would be the last time I saw him, because I wondered that every time I saw him. That was the nature of our relationship – so much time spanned between our visits that it was completely reasonable to assume that one of us might expire before we saw the other again. Despite this, I clearly didn’t say anything memorable or poignant. Those moments are impossible to engineer. Even when you try to make a goodbye meaningful, the last time you see someone is never, ever going to be enough. Even when you expect it or plan for it or know its coming, you’re never really ready to lose someone.

I remember the last words my dad said to me. They were wholly inconsequential.

All this is to say that when you tell me you need to have another holiday with your relative, when that act might actually be the thing that kills them or you or someone else, I am unpersuaded and honestly, a little hurt. When you say it is your decision, and that you are accepting the risk for yourself, I want to draw you a diagram of how diseases spread and then I want to roll up that diagram and smack you with it. When you argue it might be your last Christmas together, I wonder, truly, what makes you so goddamn special. For those of us who have already had our last Christmas with the people we love, or never had one at all, these words sting in a way I can’t describe.

My brother and Dad at Christmas, before I was born.

I went a lifetime without seeing my father for the holidays, and I can tell you: you will survive it. But losing someone when they are far away, and being unable to go to their funeral is a far worse thing, and one that I don’t recommend. No one deserves that. Not you, not your loved ones, and not some random stranger who sat too close to you on a flight or a bus. I want you to do everything you can to avoid that.

I know you’re fed up. We’ve all given up so much of our “before” lives in this pandemic, already. To have this taken from us, too – knowing that we might not get another one with our families, is enough to make you rebel. No, no, fuck this. I’m hopping on a plane, I’m getting in the car, I’m seeing people, because that is, like, the fundamental thing that makes us human.

My aunt and I laughing about something at Christmas last year. I can’t remember why.

It feels so strange for me to tell you not to do this. Me, who clings to the people in my life like a bead of water on the hood of a car – the kind that you wipe away with your finger only to have it instantly reappear. I want the world to return to normal just as much as you do. When this pandemic ends, I promise we will celebrate every single holiday and celebration we missed – possibly all at once. We will run in the streets and scream and dance and hug strangers. It will be Christmas and New Year’s and Halloween and your birthday and mine. It will be every special day you ever missed. It will be every holiday I never had with my father.

I want us all to be there, together. And for that to happen, we have to stay home this year, and have a quiet, lonely Christmas. With any luck, it’ll be the last one.

If you read the news in the last two days, you might have caught the story that is presently haunting me: a mother, traveling with her children on a United flight, paid extra to bring her French Bulldog in the cabin. After boarding, a member of the flight crew insisted she store the dog in the overhead compartment, where people put their suitcases. The dog whimpered and cried for a while, and then it stopped. When the flight landed, they found that the dog had died, likely from suffocation.

A lot of people are asking why the woman didn’t fight against the flight attendant more. This reaction is understandable, but also unfair. We’re angry that the dog died, and we’re used to feeling like flight crews don’t care about humans, much less dogs (and United has the worst track record when it comes to their treatment of animals). So we place the onus on the owner, who must have been crazy to allow that to happen.

I’m a travel writer (mostly). I’ve been on a lot of flights. I was on four last weekend alone. And I know how utterly terrifying and confusing it can be. Flying puts you in a position where you largely feel powerless. Just yesterday I wrote about how a TSA agent made me take off my sweatshirt – claiming it was a jacket – and go through security in a skimpy tanktop that I had no intention of anyone seeing. I wanted to speak up, but I also know that every time I’ve escalated a situation like that one, it hasn’t gone well for me.

I’ve noticed the similarities in comments on both my blog post and the news story about the dog. Yes, what happened was wrong, but why didn’t you stand up for yourself?

I’m not the first woman to hear this criticism, and I won’t be the last. But the assertion that we’re choosing to be victims is bullshit. No one chooses to be a victim. The truth is this: for a lot of us, speaking up makes a situation worse. Being on a plane is already a terrifying thing. If you disagree or upset flight staff, you could be accused of violating federal law. And the wording of the law is incredibly vague:

An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or lessens the ability of the member or attendant to perform those duties, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both. However, if a dangerous weapon is used in assaulting or intimidating the member or attendant, the individual shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

If you interfere with the duties or performance of a flight attendant, you can get up to 20 years in prison. There’s a good chance that you won’t be found guilty, but the wording is unclear and the risk is huge. And even if you aren’t charged with violating the law, a whole host of things could happen to you, including financial penalties, being removed from your flight, being added to the no-fly list, or (if applicable) deportation. And we don’t know what someone’s circumstances are; simply stepping off a flight because you are unhappy is the realm of the rich and the privileged.

Now, imagine: flying on a plane with your two children (one of whom is an infant) and not speaking the same language as the flight attendant. Imagine being told that even though you paid to carry your dog in the cabin, you have to put it in an overhead compartment. Some part of you has to be freaked out – you can’t fight with the flight attendant. There’s also some presumption that a trained professional who works for an airline wouldn’t advise you to do something that would kill your dog.

And remember, most airlines won’t put up with any dissent – even if you later comply. Alaska Airlines recently told me I couldn’t bring my smart bag on their flight (even though it’s not prohibited by the FAA and other airlines allow it). I fought them on the issue (which made the situation worse, I assure you) and eventually I agreed to throw out my bag. Alaska still threatened to not let me board after the bag was thrown away. I had to literally beg them to let me on.

And get this: after I ditched my bag (which they told me they were going to detonate along with unattended baggage), they put the bag on the flight after having checked it under someone else’s name.

I don’t know who Lauren (?) Williamson is, but I’m fairly certain she’s another passenger and not an Alaska employee.

I have no doubt that being a flight attendant is harrowing work. And the power dynamic between passengers and crew has been intentionally skewed, because that’s how you maintain order among 300 smushed inside a flying metal canister. But if they are going to wield that kind of power over their customers, they need to do so with empathy and understanding and mindfulness. The issue here is not why this passenger didn’t fight for her dog’s life. The issue is why an airline would endanger that dog’s life in the first place.

Rand hugged me, wore that same worried look he gets on his face when something goes wrong and he’s not there for it. For a long time I wondered what it was about me that meant the second I went on a trip on my own, things started to fall apart.

I figured it was something I was doing. But I’ve started to wonder if maybe I have that wrong. Maybe I have trouble when I travel without Rand for one very simple reason: a woman on her own is treated differently. Maybe the reason I hate traveling by myself has nothing to do with the fact that I’m traveling by myself.

I did my best. I shrugged off the drunk guy who loudly proclaimed that I was hot, over and over again at the airport bar. I didn’t look at him when he started talking in detail about my appearance. He liked my shirt. He he had many feelings about my face. A few frantic laughs escaped my mouth. His friend told me to just ignore him, and, never directly looking at either of them, I did.

They eventually walked away. You can’t bring a bottle of water through security, but you can bring a drunk asshole.

Traveling on my way from Albuquerque to Los Angeles on that same trip, a TSA agent yelled at me to take off my jacket.

I stared at him blankly. I was not wearing a jacket. I was wearing a hoodie – small, form-fitting, thinned from nearly a decade of wear. No one in their right mind would call it a jacket. I was wearing a camisole underneath it – not something that I planned on anyone seeing.

I was initially confused.

“I’m not wearing a jacket.”

“Ma’am, you need to remove it.”

“You mean my hoodie?”

“TAKE IT OFF.”

It is a scary thing to go through airport security under normal circumstances. The power deferential is too big. To be screamed at that you need to take off your clothes – not your coat, or your shoes, or your belt, but your actual clothes – by a dude who won’t deign to look you in the eye adds a level of bullshit that I can’t quite articulate. I stood, arms crossed tightly over my chest. Another agent stared at me for a long while, and I contemplated picking my nose to get him to shift his gaze. This thought, as I stood wearing a glorified sports bra, almost made me laugh. It gave me hope of some control in a situation where you have none.

The offending hoodie. Not pictured: the teeny tiny camisole I had on underneath it.

Waiting for my pat-down (I won’t go through the body scanners. For those that feel that this equates to me consenting to take off my hoodie, it doesn’t. I have literally had hundreds of pat-downs. I’ve never had to do so in a camisole), I was tempted to ask the agent what would have happened if I was part of any number of religious groups that don’t allow for bare arms. In the end, I said nothing. I just wanted to catch my flight home; it was completely within this agent’s power to stop me from doing that.

“I’d have contacted the ACLU, and I’d have sued him,” a colleague in the travel world told me when I recounted the story to her. I wrinkled my brow. I don’t have the resources – not in time, finances, or emotion – to sue someone for making me take off my sweater. But unless you have those things, there isn’t much recourse. You stare straight ahead, you take off your hoodie, you cry afterwards.

“You are doing a disservice to people who can’t speak up, who don’t have your privilege or your platform,” she said. And she’s not wrong: those of us with privilege and a microphone have an obligation to speak up for those that don’t. But are we obligated to speak up for ourselves even when we don’t feel safe doing so? Or when speaking up can make the situation worse?

“I know you have comebacks. I know you can put these guys in their place,” Rand told me, as I fired off a scathing reply to a piece of hate mail I received for my cinnamon roll piece. “But I worry …”

He trails off there. I know the things he’s worried about. The hackers who got into my Twitter account. The ones who’ve tried to hack this site. The threats I’ve gotten via the blog or by email. For a travel blog.

A scathing response is likely to provoke more rage than no response at all. I press my forehead against my desk. Sometimes, I have no answer. I want tell the drunk guy in the airport bar that he should spend the next four hours trying to piss in his own mouth and show him a diagram I made that he might find helpful. I want to give the TSA agent in Albuquerque a lesson ON WHAT A JACKET IS. I want to tell the guy who sent me an email about how I cuss too much to go fuck himself until he passes out from dehydration.

I am not going to do any of that.

I am grateful for the paradigm shift that is now allowing women to speak out against this bullshit. But I’m also empathetic of women who don’t say anything out of fear of incurring more wrath. We can’t condemn people for being quiet about their harassment if it’s not safe for them to be anything but quiet about their harassment. The burden that we’ve place on the abused and the harassed to speak up is out of step with where we are as a society. Sometimes we are understandably frightened of what might happen to us and our loved ones. And sometimes we speak up, and absolutely nothing happens. There are no consequences for our abusers; there are only consequences for us. They remain in power. They continue to climb the ranks. And worse still: they now know we’re going to be a problem for them.

Being a woman and traveling on your own should not be a terrifying thing. But sometimes it is. The shit that happened on this trip was minor. It was every day stuff. I see women dealing with bigger issues on an everyday basis; hell, I’ve dealt with bigger issues. But even the things that “aren’t that big a deal” are shrouded with the worry that things could take a turn for the worst. So I never relax. I say this as a very, very privileged woman. I never fucking relax when I’m traveling alone.

“I want you to be okay when you’re on the road by yourself,” Rand says to me when I get home, and I nod. I want that, too. I know he feels guilty, because he was a thousand miles away and couldn’t do anything to help. And I want to tell him that I was right there, and I couldn’t do anything, either.

Pictured: Rand, the best person on this plane. Also pictured: Dude in headphones who screamed when people got too close to him.

I have this terrible habit of assuming that most people are generally good, contributing members of society, and not bat-shit barely-functioning assholes. Every now and then we may deviate from this norm (I once woke up angry with Rand because he’d done something to piss me off in a dream) but for the most part we adhere to a social contract that requires us to at least pretend that we’re simply scratching our nose when we are actually digging around for boogers.

And while I have seen all manner of weird things while on the road, I can safely say that nothing compares to what I saw on the Southwest flight that Rand and I took from Albuquerque to San Diego.

Generally, I don’t fly Southwest because I don’t hate myself. I fly Alaska Airlines, and the delta (ha!) between the two airlines is the same one that exists between Donald Trump and Obama: on some level, these two things are fundamentally the same (men who have held the office of president; commercial airlines) – but seriously, fuck no. No way. These things are not the same. One will get you where you need to go and the other is probably going to get us all killed OH GOD HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.

Ahem.

Anyway, Alaska’s big flaw is that they don’t really operate anywhere but the Pacific Northwest. Outside of the west coast, everyone assumes flying Alaska Air means you are from Alaska. They inevitably start asking questions, and I’m too embarrassed to admit I’m from Seattle so I just say things like “YES PENGUIN MEAT IS DELICIOUS”.

For those of you who are itching to point out that there are no penguins in Alaska: that is not the biggest problem you should have with that sentence.

ANYWAY.

Southwest does not have assigned seating. I mean, I’ve been to movie theaters that have assigned seating. It the cornerstone of any functioning society. It is what separates us from the Italians. Remove it, and people start strangling one another for free t-shirts. I’ve seen it.

Instead, Southwest is a fucking free-for-all. First come, first served. And that is where I think the root of all appalling behavior on Southwest flights originates.

Rand paid extra to have us board in an early group, because Southwest isn’t going to let its running-of-the-bulls-but-with-children-and-old-people-and-carry-ons seating structure stop them from having a social hierarchy.

I should note that the crew was actually lovely. But they are still part of this evil empire so I blame them, too. Sometimes the devil brings you ginger ale.

We boarded, and the crew announced that there was plenty of room on this flight, which meant that everyone became Gollum, screaming “MY PRECIOUS” while lying across an entire row. I’ve seen this tactic before.

Other people go the more passive aggressive route: they wear paper masks over their faces, despite showing no discernible signs of illness, to frighten away hypochondriacs.

Or they just act like assholes, which seemed to be the school of thought that most of the people on this flight adhered to.

We boarded, and as Rand was graciously putting my carry-on in the overhead, I guess he took a second too long to do it, because some woman passed him and said haughtily, “Uh, they check bags for free.”

OH SHIT, REALLY, LADY? THEY DO? Sorry I’m not fucking up to speed on Southwest’s amenities, but since they can’t even get seating right DO YOU REALLY THINK I’M GOING TO CHECK MY BAG SO THEY CAN SEND IT TO A DUMPSTER ON WHICH SOMEONE HAS HASTILY SPRAY-PAINTED THE LETTERS “SFO”?

I wanted to hurl myself at her like a cat thrown from a car. Instead, I restrained myself. For that, I deserved a cookie, which, like social contracts, is something else that Southwest does not have.

The problem with Rand is that when there is a fight for limited resources he is not strategic at all. He will absolutely not push over an octogenarian for a free sandwich, and that is why he will never get ahead in life or on a Southwest flight.

(Sorry. I don’t actually believe this. It’s the airline talking.)

Rand pointed to aisle and middle seat that were free, but taking a middle seat on a non-full Southwest Airlines flight is basically asking to get shivved.

By the time I realized that wasn’t going to work, the nearest seat available to me was an aisle seat a few rows back. There was a woman already in this row, seated by the window. She’d pulled the tray table for the middle seat down – a subtle way of saying “back the fuck up” – and glared at me as I sat down. Over the course of the flight, she proceeded to eat numerous hard-boiled eggs with her bare fingers. I hate her.

Opposite me was seated the asshole in headphones pictured above.

I call him an asshole because when another another passenger asked if they could take the window seat, this guy yelled, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THE ENTIRE PLANE IS EMPTY.” He then refused to move, but the other passenger just stood there, calmly waiting, and finally the guy stood up, visibly pissed, and let him take the window. He then mumbled a bunch of unrepeatable things under his breath.

And while I think there is a special circle of hell for all of these people, it does not compare to the gentleman who was seated across the aisle from me and one row back.

His actions made me question whether or not I was hallucinating. I thought my club soda had been drugged.

Roughly halfway through the flight, I heard a metallic clicking sound.

*CLICK*CLICK*CLICK*

I furrowed my brow. I knew that sound. But … no. No way. I turned, trying to identify the source.

And then I found it.

HE WAS CLIPPING HIS FINGERNAILS. I kid you not. They were flying everywhere like some unholy confetti. There is never a time in which that many pieces of genetic material should be airborne.

There are so many questions that I wanted to ask him.

What is wrong with you?

Are you actually an alien who is pretending to be human, and failing in the endeavor?

Why didn’t you do this in the bathroom? OR AT HOME?

You’re going to pick that shit up when you’re done, right?

What is wrong with you?

Is this your first time on a plane? And around other humans?

No, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? 

Alas, only one of these was answered. When he was done, HE. SWEPT. HIS. FINGERNAILS. ON. TO. THE. GROUND.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DO NOT HAVE ASSIGNED SEATING. Everyone has an “it’s me or them” mentality that extends to the entire flight. *I* want to sit here. *I* want to be an asshole. *I* do not give a fuck that other people exist.

I stared, disbelieving. I looked around, to see if anyone else was appalled. Rand was asleep and rows ahead. Asshole dude was watching some video, oblivious to his surroundings. Hard-boiled egg woman was … holy shit, where did she get more eggs?

No. I was the only one who witnessed it. On Southwest, no one can hear you scream.

It’s a little past six a.m. here in Seattle, but I’ve been up for more than three hours, trying to sleep, but inadvertently writing this post in my head. We returned from Scotland yesterday, connecting through London to Seattle – the last leg of the trip now so familiar to us, I know the menus and the in-flight security video, and even some of the faces I see on the plane by heart.

And while I’ve taken that route many times before, yesterday’s flight was, without question, the worst flight of my life. It was not because of delays (there weren’t any), or screaming children (that’s what children do), or due to any fault of the flight crew, who were incredibly supportive and wonderful and kind.

Yesterday’s flight was terrible because I – a fully grown woman and pretty damn seasoned traveler – was bullied by another passenger to the point of a panic attack. I need to tell you all what happened, because I think it’s an important story to tell, and if I’m perfectly honest, I’m still terrified of this man. His words keep echoing in my head, and I’m not sure how to get them out. I’m hoping that if I write them down here, I’ll exorcise them from my head. That usually works. That’s what my friend Celeste would tell me to do, and she’s an expert at self-exorcism.

Before I begin, I need to include a trigger warning (yes, seriously. These damn events are triggering for me.) If you have panic attacks, please note that I will be describing mine in depth below. I will also be talking about emotional abuse, hostility, misogyny, violation of personal physical space and boundaries, as well as some latent threats, all at 36,000 feet. Whee.

I was traveling in World Traveler Plus with my beloved (yes, we splurged for a little more legroom!) in two seats off to the side – a window and an aisle on the right side of the plane. We had our in-flight meal, dozing now and then, and I’d noticed that I was occasionally having trouble reclining my seat – it would recline a little bit, then fully, then not at all. Rand seemed to be having similar issues.

I suspected something might be going on, then decided it was simply paranoia on my part. The overhead lights went off after dinner, the passengers around me began to drop off into snoozing or TV watching, and I tried reclining my chair. This time it didn’t budge. Weird.

“Can you recline your chair?” I asked Rand, gently.

“Yeah, of course I can,” he said, and to demonstrate, he did so. The second his chair reclined, the row behind us came alive. The man seated behind me began to bark at us. He was somewhat unintelligible due to his volume and slurring of words.

“Canyouputyourseatup?”

“Huh?”

“Can you put your seat up? Can you put your seat up? Can you put your seat up?”

The man spoke rapidly and harshly without waiting for Rand to reply and it soon became obvious that he wasn’t asking. I should note – he wasn’t seated behind Rand – he was seated behind me in the aisle. The woman next to him, directly behind Rand, wasn’t actually traveling with him. They’d been chatting on the flight, but I heard intros between the two of them.

“What?”

“I’m gonna need you to put your seat up.”

“Uh, sure,” Rand said, thinking it was just some temporary thing – that perhaps some item was caught that needed to be retrieved. People who travel a lot understand these things – the man in front of me just reclined his seat and cracked me on the skull (I’d been leaning over). That shit happens. It’s a plane, and planes are crowded places.

Rand gently pulled his seat up a little and the man behind us quieted down.

“Mine reclines fine,” Rand said to me, still unclear on what was happening. By then I’d started putting the pieces together, and was somewhat petrified. The guy behind us was not going to let us recline our chairs. And he was willing to be aggressive about it.

I was exhausted. I need to sleep. So I tried reclining my chair again. I pushed the button in, but nothing. I tried pressing back, and it would wiggle a bit, but wouldn’t budge.

“Mine isn’t working,” I said to Rand. He tried pressing the button without any luck.

“I’ll figure it out,” I told him. I kept trying for a while.

Finally, with sudden jarring, it reclined. I curled up, and the second I did, the man behind me shook the back of my chair violently. I started.

“You’re going to put your seat up.”

I looked at him over the back of my seat, confused.

“What?”

“This isn’t working for me. You need to put your seat up.”

I tried to understand what he was talking about.

“Wait, what?” I repeated.

“You need to put your seat up now.”

Was this actually happening? I’d heard about this sort of thing, but despite traveling roughly 80,000 miles ever year for the better part of a decade, I’d never seen it in real life. I certainly didn’t expect to be caught in the middle of it. I took a deep breath. I’m not great at advocating for myself. It’s something I struggle with in virtually every facet of my life.

“I’m sorry, but I’m very tired, and I need to recline to sleep.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head with a mocking grin. “You aren’t going to sleep. It’s 7:30pm. It isn’t sleepy-time,” he said, in creepy sing-song. Then his voice dropped. “Unless you’re three.”

“Well, I got up very early and – you know what? I don’t need to explain myself,” I said, after realizing I was starting to do just that. We were, after all, on a plane. People sleep on planes at all hours. And it wasn’t 7:30 in the sky somewhere over Nova Scotia. Everyone around me was asleep. THE OVERHEAD LIGHTS WERE OFF.

“I’m tired, and I have every right to recline my chair and sleep.”

I cannot tell you how difficult it is to say this sort of thing to an angry, irrational man who is literally locked in an enclosed space with me.

“Typical American reaction,” he said.

Here’s the kicker: while this was all happening, THE GUY HAD HIS CHAIR RECLINED. I kid you not.

We went back and forth. He continued to tell me that I wasn’t going to recline my chair, that it wasn’t time for me to sleep, that I wasn’t allowed, and that he wouldn’t let me. He occasionally returned to the mocking, sing-song voice.

“You know,” I said, “If you had asked me nicely, I would have been happy to make something work. But you’ve been so incredibly rude-”

“Excuse me? I haven’t cursed at you once.”

“Wha …” I was dumbfounded. “You. Can. Be. Rude. Without. Cursing.” It was like talking to a seven-year-old.

“Oh, yeah, I’m the worst person in the world. I’m the wrong one here,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“I’m sorry, but I need to sleep, and I’m going to recline my chair.”

“Then I’m going to do this,” he said, grabbing the back of the seat and shaking it (and me with it) violently up and down.

And then he grinned at me, and. Fuck. Fuck. I can’t write this without losing it.

Deep breath, Geraldine. Deep breath.

He grinned, he looked at me, and he said the following:

“I can go all night.”

(And here’s where I take break, calm my breathing down, have a good cry. Maybe look and see if that jacket I wanted went on sale … Nope. Oh, well.)

Being a woman can be a terrifying thing. It doesn’t have to be, it shouldn’t be, but most of the time, it is. From the time that we are very small, whether we be male or female or anywhere on the spectrum in between, we are taught to identify what’s ours. When we are babies, our parents ask us where our noses are, and we gleefully point it out with various degrees of accuracy. Where’s your nose? Where’s your tummy? Where are your toes? When we are small, we are taught these things, and it carries with it an important lesson: your body is your own, and no one else’s. These parts of you are yours and yours alone.

But inevitably, if you are a woman, a stranger will make you feel at some point like that isn’t the case. And it starts when you are very, very young. I can speak in general terms about this: every single woman I know, I mean EVERY SINGLE WOMAN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE has had that happen to them. Some creepy comment from a stranger (or, fuck, sometimes not a stranger) received at an incredibly young age that makes us think: maybe everyone was wrong. Maybe these aren’t my legs. Maybe these aren’t my arms or my thighs or my butt or my breasts. Maybe that dude mumbling to me in the park has some claim to them, because he sure as hell is acting like he does.

Sometimes we cover these parts of us up, so that those people don’t see, so that we can pretend they are ours. We hide away ourselves, believing (erroneously, I should note, and that is part of the fucked-up-ness of it all) that will keep us safe. After all, that’s the impression everyone gives us. It’s why “What were you wearing?” was (and in some places, remains) the first question that some many women are asked after an assault.

(Here’s the worse part: we, as women, do it to ourselves. Because the second we accept the truth that this shit happens regardless of what we do, we lose one of those mental constructs we’ve created to help us feel safer. When I hear women’s stories of assault or abuse I immediately want to downplay it. Not because I don’t think she’s telling the truth, but because I know she is, and that scares the hell out of me. I try to come up with extenuating and mitigating circumstances EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE NONE, otherwise I can’t come up with a reason for why it won’t happen to me. Newsflash: there aren’t any. It happens to all of us.)

We walk away, we go someplace where we feel safer. We creep into our beds and hug our knees to our chest and we try to stop shaking and thinking about what was said. We try to create boundaries, we try to put physical space between us and them.

But what happens when you can’t do that? What happens when someone is literally inches away from you, telling you that the space you thought was yours – SPACE THAT YOU LITERALLY FUCKING PAID FOR – is not? That you aren’t going to sleep unless you do what he says? That he will physically shake you in order to make you do what he wants?

I know that people are going to tell me that I’m making ridiculous parallels here. That telling a woman she isn’t going to sleep on a plane doesn’t contribute to rape culture, right? Maybe not – at least, not as significantly as all the other shit we deal with. But it sure as fuck doesn’t help women, either. It’s pretty safe to say that this dude is not at the forefront of the feminist movement. He’s not listening when a woman presents clear boundaries.

Yesterday, while all this was happening, while my brain struggled to be consciously present, my body did something else.

My body was terrified. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. I could barely breathe. My heart was racing. Because it knew that it needed to be scared. Because it knew, even as my brain tried to calm it down, that this was very dangerous situation, and one that I couldn’t escape from.

Don’t believe me? Here is what my heart rate did as I sat in a fucking chair being harassed by this guy:

THE FUCKER PUT ME IN FAT BURN MODE WHILE I WAS SITTING DOWN IN A CHAIR. (And spare me the fucking jokes. I’d take six hours on the treadmill over him.) The point is: I had seen how this guy spoke to Rand. It was still rude, but there was a difference. He pretended like Rand had a choice. With me, he made it clear I didn’t. With me, he physically invaded my space. He shook me, literally and figuratively.

“You don’t get to talk to me that way,” I said. And again, “I have a right to recline my chair.”

“No, you don’t,” he said. “That’s not going to work for me, and you need to find a compromise I can live with.”

In other words: change your actions until I’m happy, or suffer the consequences.

“You are the rudest person I have ever met,” I said, standing up. It was all I could say. My words had long ago left me, and every one that I managed to get out was a struggle. “I’m going to take a walk to calm down and get away from you for a while.”

“Yeah, I’m the rude one,” he said, laughing. And then, then the clincher, the words every single woman has heard in some form or another while trying to stand up for herself:

“You’re overreacting.”

Of course.

You need to calm down. You’re hysterical. You are blowing this out of proportion.

I immediately walked to the back of the plane, shaking.  I told the flight crew what was happening. They crowded around me, concerned. They brought me water. They told me I was right to tell them. They held my hand.

Later, I would ask Rand why he didn’t check on me, why he didn’t say something to defend me when I was obviously terrified, and he told me that he had no idea that I was panicked. I seemed fine. He thought I had handled it well, and that I was simply walking away from “a dude who was clearly crazy.” We get so good at concealing our own terror – we don’t just succeed in hiding it from ourselves, we hide it from people who know us best.

I’ve complained about British Airways in the past, I’m sad to say. But after yesterday, I can’t imagine doing that again. The crew was amazing, if confused as to why I was shaking (later this week: an in-depth look at panic attacks on planes. FUN READING FOR ALL.) They went and talked to the guy who sat behind me.

I will hand it to him: he was nothing if not a consistent sack of shit. He told them point blank that if I came back and tried reclining my chair, he would do it again.

“Sir, I strongly advise you not to do that.”

The head of flight crew, a petite woman named Petra, came back not long after.

“He’s … he’s … HE’S SUCH A BULLY!” she finally said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.” She told me that her male colleague had to take over, because she was making no headway. The guy sitting behind me did not back down. He certainly wasn’t going to listen to a woman, even if she was in charge of the entire goddamn cabin. I heard the crew temporarily discuss whether or not they would need to have police meet us at the airport and escort him off the plane.

I listened, replaying everything that happened, trying not to drown in my own panic. There were hours of the flight left, and I was stuck sitting in front of this guy. I imagined everything he could say and do. How he had point blank told flight crew that he wouldn’t stop. I tried to stop shaking. But the thing is, if your body does something involuntarily, it’s really hard to get it to stop. I tried to stop crying. I tried to breathe. I couldn’t.

Another member of the flight crew calmly told me that they’d be getting me and Rand new seats – that the man was insufferable, and no one should have to sit through his abuse.

Later, I found out that the man behind me told Rand that he had done us a favor.

“I just got you upgraded,” he said.

Let’s just see exactly the nature of his favor. Here’s me before the flight, with Rand, in World Traveler Plus:

We look pretty cute, right? Exhausted and running on 5 hours of sleep, but cute.

And here is me, post-panic attack, in Business Class:

Thanks for the favor, asshole. Here’s a brief chart for next time:

Business class with a panic attack < World Traveler Plus

Business class with a panic attack < Economy

Business class with a panic attack < Economy sandwiched between members of the US Olympic Synchronized Farting Team

To the crew of BA flight #49, flying into Seattle yesterday: Thank you. To Kelly, Petra, Suzie, Anthony, and Laura, I do not know what I would have done without your intervention. I am terrified just thinking about it. You went above and beyond and we are very grateful.

To those that say I am overreacting, that I should have told him before lowering my chair, that I should have compromised: No. I did nothing wrong. I was calm, I was clear, I was doing what literally every person around me INCLUDING THE ASSHOLE WHO HARASSED ME was doing. I was left shaking and crying and terrified and told that he did me a favor.

And in the end, he was left with a vacant seat in front of him. In the end, he got exactly what he wanted.

I honestly can’t imagine anything worse that not knowing.

Sunset on our flight coming back from Palm Springs.

I am not a nervous flyer. It’s hard to be with Rand. He constantly spouts out facts (or, at least, I assume they are facts. I’ve never bothered to check, because he says them with such confidence. And perhaps that’s for the best) about how flying is far safer than driving. About the infinitesimal odds of being in a plane accident. About how there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

Most of the time, I believe him. I dread turbulence not because I’m afraid we’ll fall out of the sky, but rather because I will inevitably start feeling sick. My concerns are not when I fly with him, or even when I fly alone. But when Rand takes a flight without me, I get nervous. I feel like facing the issue of my own mortality is way easier than facing the issue of Rand’s.

And so, when he leaves without me, I think about the million things that could go wrong (even though they rarely do). I check news sites when he’s up in the air, to make sure that nothing catastrophic has happened. If I don’t hear from him when I’m supposed to, it is always because of something innocuous. His flight was delayed before takeoff, or after, or, for some reason, his text just didn’t go through. But there is always a split second of worry. A few fleeting seconds where I wonder if he’s okay.

I can’t imagine those seconds stretching into days, and knowing that, short of a miracle, the outcome will not be a happy one.

Since flight 370, Rand has been on three flights, each without me. And despite those few seconds of concern, I know that he’ll come back, safe and sound. It’s happened so often, I accept it as a fact. As almost inevitable.

I accept it as such a given that if something catastrophic did happen, I know I wouldn’t really be able to grasp it. I’d hold on to the belief that he was okay, until I had factual information otherwise. I know, because I do it with matters that don’t pertain to him – I genuinely believe in the best possible outcome, no matter how unlikely, until I have hard evidence to the contrary.

I think that’s why this missing flight has occupied so much of my heart and mind these last few days. Perhaps it’s naivete or perhaps it’s optimism. But I still hold out a crazy hope that all of those missing people are absolutely fine. Which is just ludicrous.

This was the conversation I had with Rand last night, as we were getting ready for bed:

“Do you think those people on that flight are dead?”

“They almost certainly are.”

“But … what if they aren’t?”

“That seems really, highly unlikely.”

“So there’s no chance they’re alive?”

At this point in the conversation, Rand sighed, put his toothbrush down, and looked at me.

“It’s not that there’s no chance,” he said, “but … they’re probably gone, baby.”

“I know,” I replied. I did.

But I still need proof, before I can actually abandon all hope. I know that’s stupid. I realize how illogical it is. Because honestly, I think that having hope, when there is absolutely zero reason to have any, sets yourself up for even greater heartache.

And that is, really, one of the saddest things I can think of.

Technically, this is an airport selfie, so it didn’t make the cut.

–

I know, I know.

I already recapped 2013 with a bunch of nauseating photos of me and my husband, making out in various locations around the world. And many of you clicked through it, and managed to contain the contents of your stomach, and for that, you should be commended.

Congratulations. Seriously. Watching two squishy mortals make out can be rough, can’t it? That’s why god invented Brangelina.

Ideally, we would be through all that unpleasantness, and you’d be reading a reasonably well-crafted and well-researched post about some city that I’m planning to visit. Except that I realized that I had a bunch of unpublished photos from last year – all of them self-portraits that I’d taken just as our plane was about to take off.

And THEN I realized that I had all the ingredients to make cookie bars in my kitchen.

So instead of a well crafted post, you are getting more blurry selfies of me and Rand, occasionally looking exhausted, or making out, or both. Which isn’t terribly interesting, I’ll admit, but I got cookie bars, so … I’d say we’re even, right?

No?

(Eats cookie bar.)

Well, I’m sorry about that. Really (munch, munch). I am.

Kind of.

Anywhoodle, here are some more photos of me and Rand on planes. Apologies all around, and long live the cookie bar (until I eat it).

We started the year fuzzy, and tired, and maybe a little bit double-chinny and in need of make-up (I only speak for myself, here. Rand has gorgeous coloring). Here we are on our way to South Africa in January:

–

That remains one of the more remarkable experiences in my life.

And here we are, equally fuzzy and tired, on our way to Australia this past March. (Isn’t it weird that this is how exhausted we look at the start of a trip?):

I have since burned that shirt and stomped on the ashes. Who knew that fluorescent coral would be unflattering?

This next photo is surprisingly clear. Not sure what happened there. Though I did cut most of our heads off. Taken in April. I have no idea where we were going.

–

This photo, also taken in April, breaks my heart a little because Rand is missing. I went to California for the weekend without him. I considered making the person sitting beside me take a photo with me, but I chickened out.

–

Here we are in May, on our way to Florida from Seattle:

–

From there we went to Boston. The weather was radically different, so I arrived at Logan Airport in shorts and a straw fedora, and froze.

Okay, seriously, why can’t I take ONE non-blurry photo?

–

Seattle to Paris, June.

–

Seattle to Denver, July:

–

Seattle to Medford, September:

–

Newark to Seattle, September:

–

Philly to Seattle, October:

–

San Diego to Seattle, December:

Still sleeping off the Tryptophan.

–

Seattle to Palm Springs, December:

–

And that was our blurry and exhausting 2013.

]]> https://everywhereist.com/2014/01/2013-revisited-self-portraits-on-planes/feed/ 5 https://everywhereist.com/2014/01/the-tsa-almost-confiscated-my-souvenirs-heres-why/ https://everywhereist.com/2014/01/the-tsa-almost-confiscated-my-souvenirs-heres-why/#comments Wed, 08 Jan 2014 06:00:16 +0000 https://everywhereist.com/?p=10565 This post was almost about macaronuts (which is, for those of you who are unfamiliar, a French macaron that is batter dipped and fried, like a doughnut. I whispered sweet nothings at it while eating it, like a praying mantis to her mate. But something slightly more interesting happened just today (if such a thing is possible.) and I figured I’d share that with you first, even though now we’re all thinking about macaronuts.

Mmmm …

Anyway, today we flew back from Palm Springs, after a week spent lounging around in the sun with our friends Sarah and Eric (and their little son), sharing meteorologically-fascinating tidbits about the current polar vortex, including this one: parts of the United States are currently colder than Mars.

Did that just totally blow your mind? Because it should.

Our trip to warmer climates was a vacation – an honest-to-goodness-I’m-not-expensing-a-damn-thing getaway – of which my husband has far too few. It was uneventful, save for me constantly tormenting our dear friend Eric. Eric is a bit of a planner, and he’s very, very organized, so there’s plenty to torment him about.

Take this exchange, concerning when we needed to regroup so we could catch our return flight home together:

Eric: Okay, so we need to leave just after 2:oopm in order to get to the airport on time.

Rand: Alright – we’ll be back by 1:45.

Eric: Okay, good.

Me: Great, see you at 3:00!

Eric: Damn it, woman, YOU ARE ON MY LAST NERVE.

It was all kinds of crazy fun, and while I’ve got several blog post’s worth of adventures out of the trip, I realized as we were driving to the airport (we left the house at 2:30. Eric was not happy. Then we all blamed him for making us late, which was hilarious.) that I didn’t have one solid anecdote from the trip. No crazy, singular story to tell, no strange-but-significant lesson learned.

And it’s not like something crazy and significant was going to happen in my last hour in Palm Springs, right?

Right?

Everything proceeded calmly and uneventfully. We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. I got TSA pre-check, as did Rand, and we walked through security without taking off our belts or shoes. I patiently waited for my bags to emerge, and, from the angle at which I was standing, I was able to see the screen at which the x-ray operator was looking.

For some reason, I’ve noticed, even bags with the most innocuous contents look absolutely diabolical on those machines, don’t they? My curling iron resembled some sort of torture device. The contents of my toiletry kit looked like the accouterments of a heroin addict.

I stared, my mouth slight slack, as I watched my (and several other travelers’) bags being x-rayed. Every now and then the agent would highlight something on the screen and a bag would be taken off the belt for closer inspection.

When my suitcase came through, the agent highlighted a cluster of black orbs in the center of my bag. A trio of old billiard balls I’d purchased at an antique store in Palm Springs – the only souvenir I had from the trip.

“We need to take a closer look at your bag,” one of the agents told me, and I nodded. By now, everyone else was through security. Rand caught my eye from across the room.

“The billiard balls,” I shouted at him. “They look weird on the x-ray.”

He nodded.

I waited for an agent to grab my bags (I wasn’t allowed to touch them), and heave them over to a metal table for additional testing. I apologized for the weight of my bag – I could actually see her straining to carry them over.

She carefully unzipped my suitcase, and found the pool balls wrapped up in newspaper at the center.

“These are really cool,” she said brightly, and I smiled. Thus far, everyone had been incredibly nice.

“I just need to swipe them,” she said, and I nodded. She held a white circular pad in a pair of tongs, and gently swiped the surface of the pool balls with it.

I chatted with another technician while she went off to get it tested. I checked my watch – there was still plenty of time before my flight, but I was starting to get a little nervous.

The technician came back a moment later, her face serious. The test came back positive (for what substance, I am still unclear).

My jaw might have dropped slightly. Another agent came over – a short, blonde woman who was a supervisor of some sort. She calmly explained that they’d need to do some additional tests and search all of my bags. I’d need to remove my shoes and jacket (which I’d been able to keep on during my pre-check screening) and be patted down. I nodded.

Rand had come back to check on me and he managed to keep an air of levity about it.

“They were from a thrift store,” he said. “So they probably used a cleaning agent or something that triggered it.”

The supervisor nodded.

“Just imagine how many people have probably touched those things,” she added. “No wonder they set off the detector.”

I smiled and made some off-hand remark (“Oh, totally.”), but my heart was pounding in my chest. I exhaled deeply and told myself that everything was fine.

I’d heard of stuff like this happening before. Once, a woman in line ahead of me was selected for a random screening. Her hands were swiped, and they tested positive for explosives. Apparently she’d just applied lotion with glycerin in it, which can do that. And I’ve heard countless stories about people who came into contact with fertilizers or commercial cleaning agents days before and still managed to test positive for explosives.

I realized that those billard balls could have come from anywhere. It had never occurred to me to consider washing or cleaning them. And I was now thoroughly convinced that they were going to get me strip-searched.

The supervisor patted me down (it was identical to the pat-down that you receive if you opt-out of the full-body scanners, which I always do), while the other agent searched through the rest of my bags, swiping various things with a white circular pad.

And while I’m against making it easier for people to violate the fourth amendment, let me tell you: those little packing cubes that fit into your suitcase? Those make it really easy for TSA to search your bag and repack it. The agent noted several times how much she liked them. I had to agree – they are great.

The additional tests yielded nothing, and the supervisor took one last glance at my souvenir from Palm Springs.

“I’m okay with her keeping these,” she said to the agent, who wrapped them up and placed them back in my bag. She could very easily have confiscated them. It was entirely up to her discretion.

I think they’re Bakelite.

They helped me repack my bags, and wished me a safe flight. I was amazed by how nice they all were; the experience was merely inconvenient – it could have been much worse.

I met back up with Rand, Sarah, and Eric, and filled them in on any details Rand might have missed (he’d been giving them updates).

“You know what?” Sarah said. “I like those pool balls even better now.”

I nodded. I did, too. Before they were just a souvenir. But now? Now, they had a story.

View out our porthole window, the Maritime Hotel.

–

Do you ever have those moments where you pull something off (a meal, an event, a project), and it comes together so beautifully, and was almost effortless, that you are tempted to think, “This is my calling. This is what I was put on this earth to do”?

I totally haven’t, unless you count cake eating, which I’ve been repeatedly told is not a calling.

Usually I have quite the opposite feeling: I’ll try something, and it will be such an epic disaster that I am able to say definitively that genetics and the universe clearly never intended for me to carry out these tasks.

Were I to write them all down, I’m fairly certain I could fill volumes. Here is an abbreviated list of things that I will never master:

• the baking of custard-filled pies
• The Electric Slide
• recognizing that the GPS is inanimate, and not trying to mess with me
• small talk
• liquid eyeliner

As of late, I’ve been tempted to add one more thing to that list: travel.

Because as much as I do it, there are moments when it becomes clear to me that I was absolutely, under no circumstances, meant to. Given my stature, this is clear: I am endowed with a shape that can best be described as “ripe pear” (heavier on the bottom, squishy at parts, and TOTALLY FRIGGIN DELICIOUS, I might add). I’m clearly designed to be pulling a plow across a field somewhere in eastern Europe, and every now and then and I’d squat and unleash a child or two from my loins, swaddle them up, and go right back to tilling the soil or whatever.

This, obviously, was my calling in life, and I was just born in the wrong decade and hemisphere.

I was, under no circumstances, ever meant to travel. On our last trip to New York, the universe decided I needed a reminder of this fact.

We’d just landed in Newark after a slightly (but not unusually) turbulent flight from Seattle. My stomach felt queasy, despite the consumption of a half bag of ginger candies.

Rand was trying to think of the smoothest, fastest way into the city so as not to exacerbate my motion sickness. He suggested the subway, but I shook my head. I reasoned that a cab would be fastest, and if I needed to throw up, I could do so on the city streets, and not in the middle of the A train.

And so we ended up in a yellow cab, zipping onto the Jersey Turnpike, and then barreling down the Holland Tunnel, until we finally were swerving, sliding, and occasionally jerking to stops on the streets of Manhattan. I leaned my head back against seats that smelled like old coffee, exhaust, and cigarettes, and tried to look at the horizon.

The problem is that, from most parts of New York City, you can’t see the horizon.

I breathed in through my nose sharply, slowly releasing the air through my mouth. You will be fine, I told myself. You will not throw up. Soon you will be at the hotel, and you will lie on the bed, and the sheets will be crisp and cool and you will feel better.

Soon.

And sure enough, after an excruciating ride we were at the hotel, and the bed did have sheets that were crisp and cool. But I was unable to keep my part of the deal.

An hour later, I was slumped on the floor of the bathroom, the seat of the toilet cool against my cheek. I had emptied the contents of my stomach in the bowl twice so far. There was nothing left inside of me, but my body, in a vain attempt to rid itself of the poison that must have caused this, continued to lurch, violently, into dry heaves. The spasms clenched my abs until they hurt.

“Kill me now,” I whispered up to Rand, who stood in the doorway, nonchalantly.

“Oh, please,” was his reply to my melodrama. “You’ve been way worse.”

It’s not that he was unsympathetic. It’s just that this was very, very true.

He’d seen me in this state before, or worse, many times.

“It’s normal,” he said, in an attempt to comfort me. I am pleased to say that despite having a pallor the same color as the walls of a state penitentiary, I was able to give him a look of pure incredulity.

“It’s probably just food poisoning,” he said, refusing to admit that there was something fundamental about me that was prone to sickness. Something inherent in my being that leaves me unfit for travel, but totally fit for growing kohlrabi in eastern Siberia.

I shook my head. Rand had eaten nearly identical meals as I had that day. And it seemed odd that my food poisoning would coincide perfectly with a turbulent flight followed by a twisting cab ride into Manhattan.

No: this was the universe trying to tell me something. Mainly, that I was not born to be a traveler. As though my pitiful sense of direction wasn’t enough to clue me in on that.

I lay on the floor of the bathroom, soothed by the smell of bleach on the freshly laundered towel underneath me, and marveling at how pristine the toilet bowl was, even from this angle. My compliments to the housekeeping staff at the Maritime Hotel in Chelsea, who did a bang up job, and my apologies for fouling their immaculate work with my lunch.

I did not make it to the dinner that we had planned with friends that night. I tried. I really did. I even managed to put on some clothes and deodorant, and spent roughly 15 minutes with them in the hotel bar (with a brief interlude to the bathroom downstairs to throw up again) before realizing that perhaps I wasn’t going to be the best dinner date.

I shooed them off, delighted that I could be a selfless martyr.

“Go on without me,” I said, mercifully not subjecting them to goodbye hugs that would have likely smelled like barf.

Back in the room, I turned on the A/C as high as it went, lay on the bed without a blanket over me, my jeans in a rumpled pile on the floor. I hoped the cool air would kill whatever was inside of me.

I dozed, noting on the edge of my consciousness how the light in the porthole window was fading to deep blue and orange – the last few sunsets of the summer in Manhattan.

I awoke a while later, the sky outside now dark, the sounds of traffic below drifting up and into the room. The city outside didn’t care if I was sick. It was moving and bustling. Outside, life was happening. Tomorrow, I told myself, I would be a part of it. And just knowing it was there, just knowing that I wasn’t alone – not really, because how could you be in the city? – made me feel better.

I checked my phone. Rand texted me from the sushi restaurant where they were having dinner.

“Do you want me to bring you back something?” his message read. “How about some crab?”

And then, god help me, he texted me a photo of the crab roll they’d ordered.

–

I managed to laugh at gag at the same time – a first for me. He didn’t mean to traumatize me – he just had no idea how to soothe a churning stomach. Hell, this is a man who can read in the car. He doesn’t even know what it’s like to be motion sick.

“No, no!” I texted back, laughing so much that my overworked abs ached. “Saltines,” I wrote. “And Gatorade.” He returned with both (“I got you blue Gatorade, because blue is the best flavor.”)

I laid on the bed and listened to the story of his night, running to throw up two more times in between. I tried to get him to explain his logic in offering to bring me back sushi; he was unable to. I couldn’t help but smile.

Perhaps he wasn’t meant to have a sick wife. And perhaps I wasn’t meant to to travel. But sometimes the universe’s plan for you – the things that would come easily – aren’t what you want. And so, even though you are calm and not prone to illness, you marry the pukey, ill-tempered girl. Or you decide to spend all your free time traveling, when just the act of bending over to tie your shoes makes you queasy.

And at the end of the day, you lay down on cool, crisp sheets, and find you are perfectly okay with that decision.

–

Rand and I spent the weekend in Boulder, imposing on friends. I did a whole lot of nothing, which isn’t dissimilar to how I spend my days in Seattle, but being in Colorado, the nothing was done at a higher altitude.

This meant that it was slightly more work to do nothing.

The sunshine-filled days and the trip to Boulder meant that I only got three posts up last week, a revelation that scandalized my husband, and were he an elderly woman in the old south, he’d have shouted something along the lines of “Well, I never,” and promptly fainted.

In my defense, it’s incredibly difficult for me to blog during the summer months in Seattle, because I don’t want to waste a sunny day indoors. I want to do nothing but sit and stare at the sky and marvel that after so many months of grey, it can turn so brilliantly blue.

If you require proof, you’ll need to look no further than the photos I took during the flight back.

–

We approached Seattle from the south (which is rare, given that we often fly north before heading east to Europe or New York or Boston), and the view was beautiful to the point of being ridiculous, causing me to simply stare and drool and mumble to Rand as I tapped on the glass.

–

We saw the backside of Mt. Rainier, and behind it  could make out what I guessed was Mt. St. Helens, and beyond that, Mt. Hood.

–

I spent the last bit of our flight just staring out the window, forgetting to lean back so Rand could get a glimpse, too. Forgetting to take photos (except when my husband reminded me), and even forgetting that Rand had York peppermint patties in his laptop bag.

Forgetting everything, really, except for how the mist clung in the valleys, and the sun lit up the snow, and how, for a few months out of the year, there really is no prettier place on earth.

–

And that’s why I forgot to blog last week, too.