Homeward Bound

Where our intrepid traveler prepares to leave, then does

My last day in London, I start the day with coffee and croissant at Caffe' Nero not far from my B & B in Paddington. One more subway ride today, once more to Victoria Station from where I'll catch a train to Gatwick, and from there take a cab to my final (the seventh) hotel of my journey....

Then, at Starbucks in Victoria Station, I linger for awhile before boarding the train, not in a rush to leave but not reluctant to do so. I think that everyone should do something like this: a couple weeks alone and unencumbered save for the annoyance of a backpack... In 2 weeks I have had a substantial conversation with, what, one person?

Arrived in the small town of Horley without incident, and it is here I will spend my final night in England. I find my way to the center of the town after depositing my luggage at the B & B, and once again find a coffee shop from which I can look through the large windows and watch people come and go. Walking again, I buy a sandwich at a grocery store and sit on a park bench near the middle of town, and I am comfortable with ending the trip like this: quiet, relaxed, unhurried. On the way back to the hotel later, I turn left and turn right and generally circle about the town before finding a secluded pathway that cuts from one neighborhood to another and ends a few hundred hards from the B & B. It is nice to find such pathways and to bet that they will end in good places....

Successful take-offs are always good, and I leave England behind on April 3, 2007, one day before my birthday, one day before the start of another decade. Approaching Dallas, where I will wait for 3 hours before catching the flight home, we fly through and then descend into beautiful thunderheads. The weather closes in not long after we land, and I can see the clouds and rain push into the airport. The monitors show the story: nothing's landing, nothing's taking off. I call home to let my wife know I will be delayed, and then I sit and think of the woman who sat next to me from Gatwick to Dallas.

She was returning from the Isle of Man and visiting her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. She is returning to Ft. Smith, Arkansas, where she lives with her husband, her dog, and her cat. She and her husband both are retired military; she tells me of her cat, which, among other things, has carried into the house a bat and a baby copperhead. The dog and the cat explore together, she says.

Funny how you know things, though, maybe more funny how you know them too late. After she tells me about her pets, I ask her how many children she has. I regret it instantly. "I have two," she says, "but until recently I had three."

Yes, of course. I somehow knew this, and it was not funny.

She says that she has only now arrived at a point where she can say this without crying, and I do not know what to say. I tell her of a friend of mine, an artist, whose son was killed in a car wreck near Elko, Nevada, on a trip home to see her. Now, she has only one son. I tell the woman from Arkansas that my friend, too, finally reached a point where when people asked her how many children she has, she says "I have one son."

I don't, though, think my seatmate was comforted....

My wait is brief compared to other people who wait for the storm to move through, and at least my plane did not originate somewhere else. I keep checking the monitors, and my 90-minute delay is a third of what others face. I also check the flight scheduled to leave for Ft. Smith, Arkansas right before I board my plane: the woman's flight will be 4 hours late leaving Dallas. As we take off, I think of her and if she is not just alone but lonely now, that loneliness deepened by the exhaustion from the flight and the frustration from the delay. I find I wish I had said something more to her, found a way to help her feel better. And I think of her cat bringing her gifts, as poisonous as they might be.