A little over a week ago, I woke up to a note from my father that I should wake him before I left for class. This was strange, but not alarming beyond the fact that my own unpleasantness in the morning is inherited from him. What was alarming, however, was the fact that he woke up and said "don't freak out." This is almost always a sign that whatever is about to happen will most definitely make me freak out, and that that inevitable freakout is something that my father would really rather not witness. I noted his lack of desire to see a nervous breakdown and went outside to find that my car had been thoughtfully disabused of its driver side mirror by someone who must have been operating under the assumption that my car was trying to trim inches off its physique. (or under the influence of a rather sizable amount of booze). My two month old car was missing a drivers side mirror and a good deal of paint, but it was still drivable and I had class at 8:45, so I left for school and soon discovered that unmitigated joy and exhilarating sense of danger that results from trying to merge onto the PA turnpike during rush hour without the aid of a mirror. If you're unfamiliar with this road, first count your blessing, then imagine 10 lanes of cars suddenly being funneled down to one lane as they enter a road on which driving bellow 80mph can result in you suddenly having another car in you trunk. Once I was safely on the road and on my way, I made a mental note to move that evening's dinner date to another night and pencil in a nervous breakdown for the time in which I would have been dining with my partner. This schedule would allow me to attend all of my classes and a very important writing conference with my professor with a temporarily clear mind while delaying my emotional reaction over my car until a time when I was near someone who is contractually obligated to make appropriately soothing noises while pretending not to be reading the internet over my shoulder.
This was a good plan. Only it didn't play out that way. Instead, I walked into my professor's office and immediately turned from a moderately capable student into a quivering ball of salt and snot. Fortunately, one of the upshots of attending a womens' college is that the faculty are at least somewhat experienced in seeing young women come unglued. My nonplussed professor offered kleenex and let me know that needing some time to deal with outside disasters is common and that she would allow an extension on an upcoming paper if I needed. I declined the offer, commenting that "I'd better save that one for the inevitable next disaster that will be even worse." We laughed at that, and I was on my way before I could even really understand that I had just tempted fate.
Exactly one week later, excited for my upcoming trip to my cousin's wedding in St. Louis, I was on my way home when the car in front of me on the turnpike ran over a piece of tire from a semi-truck or the sole of Godzilla's sneaker. Seeing this piece of shrapnel flying through the air toward my car and having had a whopping total of 11 hours of sleep in the past 4 days, I swerved to the right, conveniently failing to notice that I was in a construction zone and that there was no shoulder but, rather, a concrete barrier where a shoulder ought to be. It took a few seconds for me to register that the terrific cracking sound was not a giant monster taking a walk, but was my car slamming into the barrier. Panicked, I quickly assessed the situation and determined that my car could still go and that stopping would probably mean death for me, and proceeded to drive home. Once there, I sat for a few minutes before working up the nerve to get out and check to see if my car was now more symmetrically damaged than it had been the day before. It was, and this upset me, but I had to complete 4 days worth of work in the next 6 hours, so I set about trying to do that until my partner came home and assumed his now familiar role as comforter.
The following morning, I got up and cheerily set about packing for the trip that would take me away from the problem of the damaged car which I can not afford to repair and to the loving embrace and good natured teasing of my family. I was very impressed with myself as I carefully packed the exactly correct amount of clothing and dressed for the rehearsal dinner I would be attending in St. Louis that evening. As my partner was dropping me off at the airport, I joked that he'd better be extra sweet to me so he wouldn't feel as bad if my plane crashed. You'd think that I'd have learned not to look fate in the eye and laugh like that, but I had not. In fact, I have a long legacy of joking about air disaster which dates back to my cousin Charles and I consistently making references to The Twilight Zone movie segment with the lightening storm and the gremlin on the wing every single time he has accompanied me to the airport. I should have been worried but I was not.
I sailed happily through the airport, cheerfully accepting the compliments of a friendly TSA agent and preparing to alternate between napping on the plane and reading some things for school. I had to change planes in Raleigh, which was a new thing and made me slightly nervous, but my itinerary had plenty of time for me to locate my connecting flight and get on my way to the party. I was confident and sleepy when I boarded the plane and very excited as the captain began the decent into the Raleigh airport. Then, just as I began to get very comfortable with the idea of switching planes, the captain made the announcement that storms in Raleigh had forced us into a holding pattern, but that we would be landing shortly. We floated about happily, and I worried about making my connecting flight until we began to descend. I assumed that we were going to land and that I might still make it to my next flight until there was a loud boom and a very bright flash of light. The plane began to bounce about like a basketball at a Globetrotter's show and the other passengers began screaming and shouting. The captain then announced that there was nothing to worry about, but we were out of fuel and needed to land in nearby Norfolk V.A. to refuel. This sounded a lot like code for "holyshitwe'reallgoingtodie!" to me, but I tried to stay calm.
Once we landed, and the plane was rapidly surrounded by firetrucks and people in jumpsuits, I started to suspect that I was definitely not going to make my connecting flight. No worries though. Surely there would be a later flight to St.Louis and my biggest problem would be killing an hour or so with no money for snacks. Well, that illusion was shattered when a flight attendant smugly announced to the plane at large that "passenger Spectre's" boarding pass for tomorrow morning was waiting at the front of the plane. Tomorrow? Well, that wasn't going to work for me. I walked up to the front of the plane to ask the steward if the airline could help me find a place to stay or another flight and was politely informed that my princess was in another castle and I was, like Mario, shit out of luck. It was then that the gravity of the situation became apparent. I had no money, had not eaten, was in the middle of a lightning struck plane, and would be grounded in an unfamiliar city over night. I did what any rational adult would do and promptly began to freak the fuck out. Eventually, I called my cousin in St. Louis to let her know that her husband would not have to pick me up that night and then tried to decide what to do. Once I located a dinner of peanut M&M's for myself, I decided that once we were returned to Raleigh, I would have an adventure and camp out in the airport. Then I found out that the airport was closed and I would have to camp out in the unsecured baggage area with the other mentally ill and homeless people. That is when I really lost my shit.
As I trembled and spewed snot and tears in Raleigh, my cousin was busy mobilizing the troops in St. Louis. She got my father to call me, though he ended up shoving the phone in my aunt's hand at the first hint of tears, showed a room full of people over fifty how to use their smartphones to find a hotel, and allowed her husband to text me the reassurance that he was, in fact, helping the situation by bringing sexy back. Within an hour, I had a room booked at a hotel and was in a cab on my way to relative safety. I spent the night in a hotel that was also providing entertainment in the form of a weed smoking and regaeton blasting party in one room and a dog fight in another, but I was at least on solid ground and able to chat with my partner, who was no doubt worried, while I lay on the fully made bed in my dress and heels.
When I landed the next morning, after spending a delightfully lightening free flight helping an unaccompanied 8 year old boy consume enough sugar to kill a small horse, I was shaking and overwhelmed, but also so grateful to be near my family. My cousin picked me up and essentially told me that I was going to eat. As we sat in an IHOP and I unhinged my jaw like a boa constrictor and shoveled in the food before proceeding to the hotel in which my extended family was staying to be met with a chorus of jokes about my skill at being cursed, I began to understand why I couldn't answer a question about where my home was a few weeks prior.
When the asker had posed the question, they were looking for a place, but my home is more than one place. It is fluid, far reaching, and full of surprises. It is my partner's beard and the way he laughs at me when I am freaking out. It is my cousins' abilities to know what I need and to tease me for not knowing that myself. It is my big burly uncle's way of making fun of me, my dad's way of not being able to see me cry, my mom's way of informing everyone around her that I do not need any more drama, my aunts' way of just being there and being solid, it is an ever expanding network of people who will laugh, dance, bring sexy back, and never ever let the coffee cup stand empty. Most of all, it is knowing that, even when I make the absolutely worst decisions, there is a small army standing behind me and just accepting me. With them behind me, I can be free to grow in a way that not everyone is, even if there are motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane, or my princess is in other castle, or I am driving in the path of a monster. I am probably the luckiest person alive because, just as they helped me make the trip to the wedding, they will help me make the trip forward too.
