6 June 2006

6 June 2006

I am on the plane with my two children, for hours upon hours. The flight is so long; we have to change planes and then drive another 100 miles from the airport to my parents' house. I watch Brokeback Mountain three times during the flight; by the second and third showings, I only watch the sex and kissing scenes, and the scene where Ennis finds his shirt wrapped inside Jack's. In the dimness of the plane, with all the windowscreens shut, I cry. Three times. The kids, engrossed in Cartoon Network, scarcely notice.

At LAX, Immigration barely lets me through. The children need visas. I didn't know this; I have to fill out forms, watched over by a bored Hispanic man. He's used to people having histrionics at his desk. The children help me find our bags at the carousel; we run to our next flight. They fall instantly asleep once the plane takes off; I haven't slept for twenty-three hours. In the end, I nod off, and when the plane touches down I think for a moment that I'm in my hometown, the one I grew up in; the lights from the airport are unfamiliar. After a few seconds of disorientation I remember where I am.

My parents meet us in the arrivals lounge. Outside, away from the air conditioning, the night is like an oven; even sweating isn't a possibility, it's too dry. The journey home seems endless, through the black of a night only found in a desert.

We make a bed on the floor for the kids using duvets and light flannel sheets. I lay down in my grandmother's bed. Her absence from her room is as sharp as the presence of her surrounding us - her armchair, her audiobooks, her television with the headphones resting on the coiled up lead, her box of tissues. The bed smells of her, a smell I remember, four years old, lying with her spooned up behind me, her arm over my waist, drifting off into sleep. I put my head on her pillow. I don't have any other thoughts, but drop straight off the edge into nothing.