Learning To Fly

I have never jumped—will never jump—out of an airplane. But this morning I walked out my front door and felt like I'd forced my body through the doorway of an aircraft at cruising altitude. I could almost feel the rush of air crashing into me like the grill of an 18-wheeler. I hear a loud humming in my ears but it’s not an airplane engine. It’s the blood coursing through my brain, trying desperately to process emotions that are thick and heady and utterly confusing. All this and I'm not even jumping out of a plane, merely boarding one.

One of Summer’s coworkers roped her boyfriend into driving me to the airport. He owns a pickup truck, which I needed to transport my junk—a 70-lb. box of clothes and shoes and toiletries, a 70-lb. clothes suitcase, two acoustic guitars, a case holding my uilleann pipes and whistles, my obnoxiously heavy and overstuffed backpack, plus a rollerboard containing two Xbox 360s (one retail, one dev kit), a Wii balance board and a flat-screen display.

Once I’d loaded everything into the bed of the truck, I came back inside and looked around one last time, set the alarm, left my house key on the breakfast bar and charged out the front door. In case you’ve never intentionally locked yourself out of your house, it’s a queer sensation. Then I pulled the door shut behind me, thinking here we go. Thinking what am I doing. Thinking holy shit. Thinking please God let this work out ok. Thinking take a deep breath and get in the truck. In order to open myself to the life that awaits, I must leave behind a perfectly good one.
One of my big fears in this process has been the logistical dot-connecting of how to get my stuff across the ocean to Ireland. I kept imagining this nightmarish scenario of showing up at the baggage checkout counter, only to be met by some grim-faced lady shaking her head unsympathetically, telling me I couldn’t check this or that, that TSA baggage-handling regulations dictate that I’m screwed because of reasons x, y and z.

But despite my overweight items and the sheer volume of stuff piled up on the luggage cart, the only hitch in the process was that one of the bags weighed 72.5 lbs, which meant I had to pull out a heavy winter jacket and carry it through security. Oh, and just to be sure that my wallet didn’t exceed the airline’s weight requirement, United Airlines relieved it of $900 to cover overweight and additional bag fees. Not bad, if you consider what it would cost Summer and me to ship all those items over in a FedEx plane.
I’m in the air right now on my way to D.C. Still trying to make sense of what I’m feeling. I’m scared to death of the immediate question marks: Will I be able to find a job? How long will Summer and I be apart? Will it feel like home until she arrives? I think the feeling of excitement is on its way shortly. After all, this is the leaving part of the journey, the wrenching goodbye to security and status quo and familiarity. The arriving part of my journey still lies ahead.

My flight to Dublin leaves D.C. this evening at 7:45pm. It will carry me through the night. If I’m able to fall asleep—doubt it—I’ll wake up in Dublin on a brand new day. That nighttime passage feels oddly appropriate. As the sun creeps into the sky tomorrow, the world will appear to start over and my life will have changed. I myself will have changed. Because my arrival in Dublin—the city that watched me learn how to crawl and walk and speak and play—will mean that I found my way home after too many years away.