November 7, 2022: Comeback Flashback -

I went on a Comeback Tour in April, 2021, driving to Seattle to say hi to old friends and meet some pandemic babies. I sat on porches (we weren’t going inside much) for brief hellos, and they were a treat.

On the last day, I was driving down the freeway when BANG! Something - likely a rock, but we never found it - shattered my moon roof, and I was covered with little squares of safety glass: in my hair, down the back of my neck, all over my lap. I didn’t pull over, just drove to my last scheduled stop, where my friends kindly shop-vacced the car, taped cardboard over the moon-roof-hole, and sent me home.

Today, I’m off on another adventure, my “NEW” comeback tour (nicknamed for stops in Newark, New Providence (New Jersey), New Haven, and New York).

I’ve been fretting - what if I get sick; what if the sketchy AirBnb in New Haven doesn’t exist? The fretting segued into a wee-hour highlight reel of Mishaps From Travels Past:  the keys flushed down the toilet, the purse lost in England, the purse lost in Scotland (SAME DAMN PURSE, it clearly wanted out), the one-way alley in Philadelphia, the plane ticket thrown away in Saskatoon, the bed-bug bites in Sequim, the jellyfish welts in Florida, the trip to China where my plane was rerouted and I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t read my boarding pass.

And then the highlight reel turned happier, and I thought Yeah, but I’m still here, proof that things always worked out. I have a fond memory of my savior in China, a middle-aged woman athlete wearing volleyball warmups.  She had no English, but was keen at spotting the bamboozled. She plucked my boarding pass from my grasp, marched me to my gate, pointed to a bench and gave me a big, clear SIT, STAY signal. No English needed.  

Then I decided the moon roof was a metaphor! (Are you not like this when fretting in the middle of the night? Well, welcome to my world.) If something goes wrong on this trip, it may be because danger dropped from the sky, something no contingency plan could have foreseen! And chances are, I’ll still be here when that’s over….

My seatmate today on the first segment of my journey - the five a.m. to Seattle - was Stephanie. She beamed when I sat down, and said she was nervous.

Stephanie is sixty-one. She has two grey hairs (“I EARNED them!”), lives in an RV, has never driven a car, doesn’t use “those computers,” has never been away from her husband, and until today had never been on an airplane. Stephanie is headed to Florida+ to see her son for the first time in twelve years, and to meet her grandson, age ten.* She’ll be there a month. She is taking one carry-on with some shorts and tees, but no sandals, because there are snakes and alligators in Florida, and she’ll be wearing shoes.

I didn’t get to be Stephanie’s travel savior, but I told her that loud noise was the wheels getting stowed, and I did a fine interpretive dance explaining the train and the terminals she’d navigate at Sea-Tac, and I said air currents in the clouds were making the ride bumpy, and it was normal. She knew that. A different grandkid had told her. “Turbulence,” she said, savoring the word.

I offered her my hand to hold, but she declined. I listened to her tales of her sister and her husband and her kids, and her dogs, and the years she worked as a caregiver in a home for Alzheimer’s patients. Best story: at one point, Della was a resident of the home, and so was a guy who was a retired mortician. Della used to freak out  unexpectedly, and one day she said, “I need my hair done! Who’s going to do my hair?” and the guy said, “If you lie down on the table, I’ll do it for you. I can do your makeup, too.”

Cross-country with Stephanie might have been a long day, but the trip to Seattle was a ball, and for that stretch, at least, I stopped fretting.

+ In my New Jersey hotel room tonight, I watched the Weather Channel people talking about Subtropical Storm Nicole, which might become Hurricane Nicole, and is aimed RIGHT WHERE Stephanie's son lives, Jensen Beach.

*Not a typo. I’m still processing this.

 Lake Michigan from the plane. No reason but beauty.

Moon roof from 2021.  Metaphor.