Tag Archives: Air Travel

What’s In The Bag?

by

Heathrow Airport Arrival 2013

Coming home is particularly sweet after an extended time away.

There’s the obvious happiness of seeing my husband John waiting for me, and the ahhh feeling I get when the plane lands safely and I make it through customs and immigration, but this time has been different and I have been trying to figure out why.

I recently returned from a ten-week stay in the US and have been a bit overwhelmed since my arrival a little over a week ago.

I hear you thinking, What do you mean overwhelmed … how long can it take to unpack your bags and settle back into your routine?

Sometimes, it’s not about the stuff in the bags.

As you can see I am pushing a very full luggage cart and it’s not the first time I have arrived from an international flight looking like a smiling beast of burden. This collection of suitcases is fairly light compared some of my past Heathrow and Gatwick arrivals. Due to decreasing weight allowances, but increasing checked baggage costs, I tend to travel lighter on my trips between what I think of as my two homes.

Except this time.

This time the extra bag I checked carried some favorite product brands I can’t get in the UK along with some new clothes and other things I have needed for a while.

Needed might be questionable, but …

I tend to be a big charity store shopper with Salvation Army, Goodwill, and second-hand shops being my ‘go to’ places. This does not mean I don’t buy new, but when I do I tend stick to the sale section. Thrifty shopping can be just as bad as spending too much on new, a lesson my normally bulging closet would illustrate had its contents not been recently whittled down.

Thursday, John and I took seven huge garbage bags filled with clothing to a local charity shop along with several bags of barely worn shoes and two big boxes of books. I think I struggled more deciding which books to give away than I did with clothes and now after looking at my bookshelves and wardrobe more critically, I have decided to go back through and do another purge.

Remember when I said it’s not always about the stuff earlier …

I have been working on multiple parts of the house since I got home, clearing away clutter and organizing what is left. I have even been in the attic going through boxes and throwing out or giving away things while doing a total overhaul of what is allowed to stay. I’ve emptied a wardrobe and a too-full dresser in the guest room and I’ve reorganized other parts of the house as well even giving away loads of my books that were cluttering John’s study, but what I haven’t done is finish tidying up my studio space.

Studio sounds a bit grand for what I do there, but it is my creative get-away space and where I do most of my writing and photography work. It also doubles as my dressing room and has an en suite bathroom attached to it both of which have been an absolute tip (trash site) since I arrived ten days ago. I left it very tidy when I flew to the US in early July, but with the big clear out over the last week things have fallen into a bit of state.

Looking at it feels overwhelming and I have been finding ways to avoid slogging through what’s left to finish it off.

I decided to take a look at how my need for perfection keeps me from getting more done creatively after reading this post by Nadia Eghbal titled  Why I Wore The Same Outfit Everyday For A Year.  As good writers and bloggers will often do, she got me thinking.

Sure I can clean like I’m still in the Army getting ready for an inspection, or make a time-consuming special something _________ insert what ever suits you here, but be sure it’s something that could use a bit more of this, or a touch of that because that’s what my rarely satisfied self would do with something I make.

I could say I’m only nesting with all this clearing and decluttering, making room for the birth of some semi-new blog or book idea, or even some business daydream that can travel with us when John and I pack up and go and some of that would be true, but I have to wonder if there’s not something bigger underlying my need to restrict and control disorder in my environment to the extent that it distracts me from other parts of my life needing attention.

I’m not going to spend any more time mulling that one over as I do better when I make a decision and move on. With that in mind, I am committing to tossing a few extra things into my partially full give-away bag.

I am willing to begin by dropping in my perfectionist tendencies along with a too tight sweater and a dress that’s really a little young for me. Then there’s that old comparison rag where I tend to judge my work against that of others. Yep, that’s going too.

That will do for me for now, but what about you?

If you’ve got something you want to get rid of, something that’s keeping you stuck or distracting you from your next best thing, feel free to leave it behind in a comment.

Go ahead, I’ll bag it up and dispose of it for you.

Because you know I do like a tidy work space, and I’m already going that way.

Airborne

by

Miranda went back to Atlanta yesterday flying out on Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day has been a challenge for me in many ways over the years and yesterday was no exception. Waiting in a London hotel near the airport, I woke at 2:15 thinking it was 4:00 and got up to sip coffee and make notes in the dark as I tried not to wake my daughter asleep in the next bed.

Working on an idea for a Mother’s Day post which never made it to the blog, I filled several pages by hand on the largest paper space I could find, writing in the back of a book I had brought to read before bed. After checking her flight information online, I could see there was a problem when Delta had her listed as leaving one day later than she was scheduled to fly.

It turned out that the Atlanta flight had a problem the night before and had never left the US. Arriving at the airport early, she was able to get on a flight leaving six hours later out of Heathrow, and Delta shuttled her with the other passengers over by bus from Gatwick to wait for the flight.

She’s sleeping now in the US as I was when she sent a text message last night letting me know she made it back so we haven’t had a chance to discuss her journey. Because she was added to an existing flight, she had to take any available seat which meant she went from sitting on an aisle to being wedged between two people the whole way back.

After she knew she would be on the flight out of Heathrow, she emailed her dad to let him know the changes since he was picking her up in Atlanta. While she was typing, I noticed a man in desert fatigues coming into the airport with more backpacks and duffel bags than one person should try to manage on their own, even if as a soldier he was used to struggling with the weight of things.

I could see he was trying to pick up the various bags to strap them to his body so I went over quickly and asked to help. I didn’t really wait for an answer and picked up the military issued backpack while offering to take the duffel bag he had already lifted on to the front of his body forming a sort of counter to the large load strapped to his back.

He was almost one color with hair a bit like several shades of sand all mixed together matching the color of his uniform and all of his gear. Looking back now, I am surprised he let me help him as often travelers are warned about people offering help with an intention to harm. I guess my looking like a mom alleviated any concern he might have felt along with his travel fatigue.

As I helped him maneuver two floors up to the Delta check-in area, he told me that he had been traveling for two days from Afghanistan and was just trying to get to Atlanta so he could catch the next flight back to his home in Louisiana.

I found myself telling him how I had been in the army too, noting silently that it was probably years before he had been born from the look of him. After putting his bags down at the end of a long line of stressed looking people, he reached out to shake my hand and said, ” Thank you, ma’am,” just a sweetly as could be. I thought about how his mother was probably waiting for him in Louisiana or maybe he was hoping to surprise her by arriving home in secret on Mother’s Day and how wouldn’t she be pleased to see that even as weary as he looked to be, her boy still remembered his manners.

I asked Miranda to let me know if he made the flight and while I haven’t heard from her yet, I sure hope they found him a seat.

*Photograph by Miranda.