Up and Away
I like to bring a book with me whenever I go away. I can’t promise that I’ll finish it, or even open it, but I like knowing I have the option to read. Perhaps I’m just hoping some stranger nearby is going to look over, notice my eyes scanning the words on the page, and think, “woah, what a mysterious woman.” Fucking dumbass.
Last week, I was packing up my suitcase for another trip to Holland with Alex. Eventually, I began to scour through my bookcase in search of the next novel that would most likely flop around in my carryon. As my fingers grazed the spines of each hardcover and paperback, I came to a halt at one I barely recognized. The Perpetual Motion Machine, by Brittany Ackerman. A book I pulled from the lending library in the writing center. I skimmed the pages and noticed there was only 135—perfect.
A few hours later, Alex and I were sitting in our $70 seats in the back of a plane that most likely has never tripped over the Atlantic. I mean, at one point, instead of bringing around a snack cart, the fight attendants pushed a fragrance cart. Cause that’s what a six-hour flight to Europe is missing, a goddamn wheel barrel of fragrant and flammable perfumes and colognes, trapped in a metal tube 20,000 feet over the fucken ocean.
Once the plane had just settled in the air when Alex reached into his backpack and pulled a hardcover novel out as thick as the websters dictionary.
“Look,” he exclaimed. “I stopped at the town library this morning and picked one up. Now, we can read together.” A smile, so proud, stretched across his face and I couldn’t help but smile with him.
I reached into my purse and pulled out min; suddenly motivated to read with my boyfriend who frankly, I’ve never seen read anything other than a biology textbook or the dessert section of menu.
Thirty minutes into our flight and I’d already made significant progress. Flipping through the pages of the memoir, highlighting scenes and adding little tabs to the edges of each page. I ended up pausing at a story she tells about her family vacations. The yearly ones she used to take with her mom, her dad, and her older brother. They’d escape to warm weather when Manhattan became to frigid and not even a puffer coat could protect you from the wind gusts between the building. It was a tradition. A family tradition. Every year.
I let my mind wander and my eyes wandered too. I looked out the window of the plane, down at the clouds and admired how far away I was from my problems.
I let myself begin to daydream…
It’s three a.m. on a particular humid Friday in August. I wake to the touch of my mother’s hand on my forehead. She speaks in a whisper, not loud enough to startle me, but enough to pull me from rem.
“Maria, lovie. It’s time to wake up. It’s time for vacation.”
I let out a slight groan and force myself to stand. I feel like I’m still sleeping, maybe sleepwalking. I march over to the bathroom like a zombie but stop when I hear my brother awake a rustling in his bedroom. His doors half open, revealing the soft light form the little baseball lamp that sits on chestnut night table. I push his door open with my face and poke my head in.
“Hey, you ready?” he asks.
“I guess. I’m just gonna try and sleep for as long as I can. It’ll be like the ride never even happened.” I reach my arms up and swat at air above, reaching for the pull up bar nailed into his popcorn ceiling. My brother walks towards me and picks me up just below my butt. We wobble and wobble as I continue to reach up, just grazing the bar above my head.
“Either grab the bar, or get longer arms, Maria. I can’t hold you like this forever.” He complains.
My mother comes from around the corner and spots our shenanigans.
“You both should be excused and dragging your butts into the car. Not attempting give your 8-year-old sister bigger muscles than you,” she giggled. I did too. My brother did not. As soon as my mother walked away, he dropped me, without warning, and my legs gave out instead of catching my fall. Immediately following my fall, I could tell the expression on my face indicted a tantrum. He gets on both knees and covers my mother. My eyes begin to well up ever more.
“Be quiet, don’t tell mom and you can stretch your legs over me in the car,” he begs.
In my shakiest of voices, I say, “I was gonna end up doing that anyways.” I sniff loud, twice, as a threat that I’ll cry out loud, and loud.
But I’m thrown back into reality when the plane’s turbulence causes a dance in my stomach. I take a deep breath and feel Alex’s hand cusp my wrist.
“You okay?” Alex asks while motioning his chin my book. I look down and notice the scratching on its spine and some paper lodged under my fresh manicure. A small mound is piling up in my lap and I look back up at Alex, and shrug.
“Oh totally,” I lie. “I’m fine.”
I look back out the window and think of all the summer vacations I once had. The ones I’ll never have again. Ones we went on for years. And it’s not so much of the vacations themselves, but the time with my brother. There was no warning when I was dropped, just suddenly, things had been let go. You’re never ready for that, there’s no way to prepare for it. The end sometimes comes out of nowhere.
Alex grabs a hold of my hand and kisses me on my cheek, pulling my attention away from the clouds floating below up.
“I can’t wait for when we get to take our future children on trips like this one day,” he says.
I lay my head on his shoulder and blush. A smile cracks in the corner of my mouth and I think to myself, this isn’t the end of tradition, but the beginning of a new one.
