My strategy for leaving England used to be to save my packing for the day before the flight. One memorable trip saw me throwing stuff into suitcases as the taxi was waiting downstairs to take me to the airport.
This time it’s been different in more ways than one. My baggage allowance coming over in March was three pieces of checked luggage. Flying home from Heathrow, British Air are restricting me to two. There are interesting problems of folding not only space, but an entire extra suitcase. The pain I always feel at my departure, which used to be sudden and sharp, is being drawn out over several extra days, and I still have Tuesday and actually leaving to look forward to, much as one looks forward to the next jolt of pain from a bad knee.
I have felt myself getting closer to Seattle and the folks I left behind there almost since the moment I took my luggage out of the cupboard. Such is the power of symbols on the mind. Strangely, this has not made me more distant from where I am. I see everything that’s become familiar to me, and suddenly I remember that it’s actually strange. It’s like having eyes in two realities, and it’s exceedingly weird.
Since I already know I’ll be back next year – I’ve got training lined up from April till September – I’m disinclined to leave all my household stuff for the next tenant, only to have to buy it again in six months. Since Ana has offered me a rental room in her house in Boston Manor while I’m looking for digs next spring (that’s if I can’t move back in to this house), I’m pretty sure she’ll agree to store a couple of Tesco bags full of things in one of the houses. Having a Brita jug and some seasonings to come back to makes me feel less like a visitor and more like I might almost belong.
But that’s neither here nor there to London. Just as London didn’t notice when I arrived, it will probably take neither pleasure nor pain at my leaving. I am not even a blip on London’s radar. Sometimes I wonder why I bother, but never for long. I know why.
So here’s to Tuesday. Here’s to leaving one life and returning to another, and to familiar and beloved faces at the airport. Here’s to bending time, as one does going west, so that a 9-hour flight will take only an hour and a half by the clockface. When they can apply that magic to the check-in queue at Heathrow they’ll really be on to something.
Au revoir, London. See you in dreams.
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