I used to have a great great anxiety of flying. Now, when
you have anxiety attack, your system gets a nice shot of adrenaline. This is
because you’re totally freaking out and your body is like, yes, of course,
there must be a great danger, I will equip you with the fight or flight serum.
Awesome.
Perfect.
Because I’m getting on a flight!
But when that much
adrenaline is pumping, your body shuts down non-essential functions. Like your
digestive system. Yeah, you thought that was essential, right? But no. Beating
heart. Inflating lungs. That’s essential. You can go without processing food
for a while.
That was actually the clue that keyed me into my problem. I had NO
IDEA I was having anxiety attacks! None! I popped a motion sickness drug after
the first time I took advantage of those conveniently located vomit bags (and
all the other bags in my immediate vicinity) and fell asleep. What happened an
hour later? I took a trip to the glorified portapotty to regurgitate a single
perfectly shaped pill. Your stomach is supposed to digest things within an
hour.
A script for the little peach pills later, and my flying problems were a
thing of the past. As long as I took them every 8 hours on the dot or so help
us all. I had to set an alarm for my trans-pacific flight. I missed the second
alarm. After your digestive system shuts down, there is no Xanax magic…
Four years of my life, I lived this way.
Until I got
pregnant.
No Xanax for the pregnant ladies.
An international flight. With an 8
month old. Moving to PNG. For three years. There was kind of a lot happening.
And I was fine. I was so preoccupied
with my little crawling bundle of joy, I didn’t have time to worry about the
plane crashing in a fiery tragic end.
And as I prepare for getting back on the plane and taking a
playful 3 year old and a feisty 2 year old on another international journey to
a world allegedly their home, with 9 planes, 6 nights in a hotel, spanning 5
countries, I’m very thankful for my children.
Now, let me plan our transport
and shuttles and what we’ll be doing with those 2 carseats when.
Then, let me
make sure baby girl has pee-peed on the potty and pull that book out for my
boy.
Let me splash in the pool and stoop to look at bugs and gaze at the stars.
And only after. After, let the reality sink in.
That I’ve left my beautiful
village house. I left my encouraging and progressing translation work. That
I’ve left my team who has become my family. That I left that all behind to leap
through an insane journey and arrive at a place where I have no place to call
my own. To return to the stressful, defeating, merciless work of fund raising
where new partners are treasured beyond all measure because of the exhausting
and debilitating road we trekked to find them. To the family and friends who
have changed and grown in ways that we don’t know.
Because right now, it seems too much to bear. But in
America, after goodbyes are rushed through because my kids have already made it
through security and I should really run after them. After the eight days (we
spend one night in the sky) of adventure vacationing/traveling (because every
vacation is an adventure vacation when you have two toddlers) that I’ll need
all those pictures to actually remember. After I have a Starbucks coffee in my
hand and I sit in a climate controlled room. Well, by then, half of that chaos
will be already be a fond memory. By then, it’ll seem like we’re halfway back
to PNG. By then, it’ll seem like, if I can get through the first two bits, I
can certainly get through the last.
So now, I push aside the worries that won’t add a moment to
my life, and thank God for the children He gave me that remind me that life is
right here, right now. In this peculiar shaped substance on the ground. Is that
buai spit? Yes. Here I thought life was about getting to the airport two hours
before boarding time for domestic flights and three hours before international
flights, but no. It’s about admiring the buai spit splatter on the ground.
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