What's beautiful about airports is the sense of transition they evoke. You are alone in between home and Other in some kind of suspended space, somewhere between I'm already tired of sitting down how am I going to make it through this 12 and a half hour flight and I can't wait to finally sleep.
The much anticipated visit home came and went and I am/will be writing this entry at different points on my re-entry to life in the desa. Right now I am shivering over my scalding tea outside of the same airport Starbucks in Chicago that I was in 20 days ago. Much to my amusement, the family sitting near me is speaking in bahasa Indonesia. I've found one of the few places where these two worlds I inhabit collide.
Appropriately, "I'll Be Home For Christmas" played for all of us travelers waiting impatiently for our bags in the Atlanta airport. Maybe some people really were coming home to stay after a long trip away. Most likely, many were wayward geese like me, coming back into sync with the formation for only a short while.
As a temporary visitor I felt the business of rushed social agendas and always trying to make the most of a moment. It's hectic but I guess my ongoing resolution ere I first stepped out of my small town into the wide world has been to carpe the diem, so this short visit was good practice for existing in and for the present moment. This holiday season at home was difficult in many ways but also refreshing. As happy as I feel overall with life in Indonesia, leaving family and friends never gets any easier. As a brilliant author whom I admire once wrote in her book Questions of Travel, "the choice (to travel) is never wide and never free."
But here are some highlights of my visit:
Seeing my angels.
My beloved family.
So twee.
So exotic.
I was thinking on the plane that one of my greatest fears in life is not acting with conviction. This is a time when it is relatively easy for young people to travel or do whatever strikes our fancy: go to school, don't go to school, up and move out of your home town, pursue a rap career...etc. People expect relatively motivated young people to "get out there." Most people I've come across are receptive to the idea of traveling when they ask their stock of friendly questions at an airport cafe. I was met with shock but still approval when I was 18 and backpacking around New Zealand. If you're outside of the mid-twenties range people usually say "good on you!" but if you're before the "settling down age" (late twenties to early thirties I presume?) they don't skip a beat in saying, "that's great. You're doing the right thing." Bonus points for long periods of time. But as easy as it is to travel in your mid-twenties, it is just as difficult to fully settle into the decision to travel.
Realizing that following your vague oh-well-I-really-just-want-to-try-something-new-dreams is diverting the course of your life and the relationships you've already established is not something you can just accept and move on with in a single stage of the process. It's a thought I've revisited all too often but know that it is not just us travelers who stand on the cusp of so much change.
Shortly before my return flight to Tokyo, a flight attendant announced that we were going from -8 degrees Fahrenheit in Chicago to a 54 degree high in Tokyo. This morning the forecast said it was 88 degrees Fahrenheit in Jakarta. When traveling between such extremes where do you find a middle ground? How does one not feel foreign in both places?
I appreciate the catharsis of the roar and the rush during take off from Chicago and then the abrupt silence as the vista opens out before me.
I am leaving America frozen in this image: an image of a vast, brisk wonderland.
I thought my host dad was the only one coming to pick me up from the airport but the rest of my family surprised me by meeting me as well. They had waited an extra two hours because my flight was delayed. Umi came hurrying up to me when she saw me, saying "Anakku! Anakku!" (My daughter! My daughter!) Then the twins came running with their so-cute-you-just-want-to-pinch-their-cheeks-smiling faces and lastly my host dad and uncle, who had been waiting at each of the exits. They smiled tiredly at me. It was idyllic and made me feel like crying out all of my anxiety over leaving so that I could make room for all the happiness of arriving to such a welcome.
I'm happy to be here having this experience, but going home has made everyone I'm leaving behind that much more precious and that will never leave me.
I lied a little when I said this blog post would only be written in transit to Karawang. After waking from a comatose state of sleep (I fell asleep finally at 5 am Indo time and didn't wake until late that afternoon), I am on my way now to a secondary project workshop in East Java with my counterpart, Bu Euis. While I'm still in this state of awe I want to record my wonder over going from winter one day to eternal summer the next. Outside, there are dragonflies, people hanging laundry, clear perfect skies and all of the saturated smells that warm sunlight enhances. It feels like the very end of a Georgia spring, right before it turns stiflingly hot.
After a wait (with no announcements that our plane would be delayed an hour) in the small Bandung airport with some other volunteers and their counterparts, we walked across the turmac to catch our plane. Included in the boarding announcements was the warning that carrying illegal drugs (any non-prescription) is punishable by the death sentence. It is certainly a brave only slightly familiar world.
Selamat tahun baru! (Happy new year!)
