A Year Since Normal

Once, I fell asleep on a flight from London to Boston and dreamed that the plane was in distress. It was an incredibly vivid dream, in which the plane suddenly veered to the left and then straightened out, and the dream passengers murmured with relief, before they cried out as the plane veered to the left again, seemingly unable to maintain a steady course. Even when I woke up, the unsettling feeling stayed with me, clinging like the memory of something that didn’t actually happen.

It’s a year ago to the day since I last flew to the States. I was wearing my new-ish orange Converse and I had the usual pre-flight nerves which, to be fair, were more about whether I’d turned off the central heating than about the flight-worthiness of the plane. I can’t remember what movies were available on the flight, or even if I watched anything. The flight was from Dublin to Dulles and, because I had gone through US Immigration in Dublin, it made my arrival at the other end so much easier. Direct flights from London, in the past, have resulted in hours waiting at Immigration which is no joke when it’s late afternoon and there’s a 7pm puck drop at the Verizon Center.

Last year, though, on February 3, I arrived at Dulles and Julie collected me and there were hockey games, and brunch, and museums, and a stuffed squirrel. There were out -of-season St Patrick’s Day socks with dubious puns and there was thanksgiving in February (or ‘lindsgiving’ and, if you ever want to feel loved, feel special, get yourself friends who’ll cook a feast in your honour, and who’ll put a can of cranberry sauce in front of you so you can attempt to extract it like a real American).

After DC, came Denver and more dear friends and more brunch, of course, and movies and snow. There was a two-night sleepover in an AirBnB and, it’s been a year, but the three of us still have movie nights, even though one of us lives in Ireland, another in America, and another in Australia (they are movie nights/mornings/afternoons). There was a Galentine’s meal with so many of my favourite people, in a restaurant that used to be a mortuary. There was mediocre hockey on the side of a mountain in Colorado in February and a hilariously long wait to leave the carpark at the end of the night

I felt vaguely ill the next day, mostly from lack of sleep, and don’t entirely remember the journey home. I expect I tried to sleep. The anxiety on the homeward leg is always of a very different, melancholy sort. That end-of-trip mood is disconsolate with a faint thread of fear, that has nothing to do with the flight-worthiness of the plane. It is: The holiday is over and I don’t know when I will see my friends again.