Coda (For Now)

The flight from Rome to Philly is one of the easiest I have ever encountered. I usually take a strong sleeping pill or drink a vodka tonic or two in order to deal with the fact that I am 40,000 feet in the air, pushed along only by these two engines on either side of me. But this time, this time is different. I decide early on in the flight that I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to take those pills. I can handle a flight, ten hours worth, without that stuff. I also surprise myself by how happy and grateful I was to be on the plane. To have made my journey safely, to know I was coming home to my parents and a huge hug from my mom at the airport, for the experiences I had and the friends I had made aboard. I wanted to write all of this down and because we were still were not allowed to get out of our seats, the only paper I had was the last page of Eat, Pray, Love, which I had at my feet to finish up reading. So I jotted down all the goodness I was feeling, all the joy, and I noticed that by using the last page to write this down, I had made a sandwich, so to speak. The first page of the book is signed by Liz Gilbert, saying may all my travels be blessed. The middle is highlighted and noted by my mother, who's copy of the book I now owned. And the last page contained my thoughts on the trip now complete. It's funny how things sometimes just come together.
I have to say, I was a bit nervous about going through immigration and customs. I had 13 bottles of wine, a lot of gifts, and while I had not been on a full out working farm, there could be questions about what exactly I had been doing or exposed to. All of that worry was, as it usually is, for not. We arrived at the gate 45 minutes early, I flew through immigration with two questions from the officer, grabbed my two pieces of checked luggage in less than twenty minutes and wasn't stopped by customs. I was outside, curbside, waiting for my mother to pick me up at the same time I was scheduled to be arriving at the gate. Smooth as silk that journey was.
Beginning in Philadelphia to wade myself back into the water of my life was a good choice. The people here have known me for decades and the connection that we have will never fade, never extinguish - it may morph into different shapes as we go through various periods in our lives, but we will always be connected. These people are the ones that keep me grounded, that make home, home. And it's a valued aspect of being back in the States because otherwise I think I'd be in a constant state of culture shock. Food is an especially big disappointment. No one knows where their food comes from, or even worse, they don't even care. It's something I'm going to struggle with a lot being back and it's going to take a lot of energy to make sure that the food I eat is something that is actually good for me and well raised.
Being here is also a way to test out my old skin and the identity I left behind when I flew over the Atlantic. Overseas I could invent myself in which ever way I wanted to. Not to say that I did, but there were no expectations as to how I should act. Everyone was meeting me for the first time and had no idea who I was. Back here, everyone knows who I am or was. Something has changed about me, but I'm not sure what. I think that will take several weeks to decipher as I get over the jet lag, see through the culture shock and settle back into a routine (which will be fairly difficult with the holidays). The best way to put it, as a friend succinctly summed up after hearing about my experience and purpose of going abroad, was that I basically defibrillated my life. Everything was out of rhythm, nothing felt right, and something needed to happen to get back on course. For me, this trip was it. This was the solid and sometimes not so gentle shock to the heart I needed.
And with that, I gather up my things, stuff them in ziplock bags and fill my pack up for the last time. It's time for my final flight back to Austin, Texas. I don't expect this to be easy. I can already feel the post-vacation depression sinking in, and that's just something I get every time I leave home for a week - imagine what it'll be like after ten. But I know that as soon as I step off that plane and grab my luggage, people will be waiting for me to whisk me away to our favorite restaurant, Polvo's, for our favorite frozen drink, the elusive (in Italy) margarita. And really, there's nothing in life that can't be solved with good friends and a Polvo's margarita.

Andiamo.