Arriving

a friend from my freshman dorm, with said dorm in background

[written in KLIA, June 7] It's an odd thing -- moving from the euphoria of affirmations and exhortations, through the exuberant anguish of photographed farewells, and the frustration of last-minute packing and discarding, into an airport. Knowing that in a little more than a day you will walk out of another airport into another home.

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[also written in KLIA, June 7] It was an interesting inversion. Four years ago you were on the bus from the airport with her and her mother, then the second one arrived a few hours after you'd settled into the dorm, and you met him even later, probably at Bible study. This time, he left first, with his family, then you left the second one standing in the driveway -- exchanging reassurances in ritualistic humour; no, you don't look weird in leggings; no, you're definitely not fat -- and then the first one and her mother drove you to the airport in their rented car.

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[and now, after a brief bout of confusion about why you're using the second person, and then weary resignation because you'd sound batty either way, you continue] You have a love-hate relationship with the check-in counter -- it marks the point where you can have done with your unwieldy luggage after multiple modes of public transport, but it sometimes makes you pay for the privilege. And you know that today you'll have to pay, because you have all four years of stuff with you (barring 28 pounds of books and 20 pounds of winter wear that are hopefully on their way to London). 

A terse officer, the only person manning the whole set of counters, tells you that both bags are a few pounds over 70, and that it'll cost you $100 each bag between 50 and 70 pounds. But the airline I'm ticketed with said it's $50 a bag? Well, she might have to collect their fees too, but the $100 is standard for any flight they operate.

Ah. Repacking gets both bags under 70 pounds -- barely -- while your friend offers to help you fight the charges (haha). Last year she'd helped you fight in JFK, and you accidentally (but sincerely) cried, and they waived the charge that you weren't supposed to pay anyway (it was the booking website's mistake). You don't know, you're a bit scared of the check-in staff. You sigh.

You take the bags back to the counter, and she raises her eyebrows at the duct tape that's failing to keep the hand-me-down suitcase intact. You blurt out -- part fluster, part strategy, all truth -- that you just finished four years of college on financial aid, and that your school is paying your ticket home. 

She walks away to deal with other passengers, and comes back a while later. Just give her back the claim stubs she gave you just now, and she'll make new luggage tags, okay? You nod, uncertain. And then she tags your bags and gives you new claim stubs and nods you on your way without a word about fees.

You burble. Thanks so much, and this might sound weird, but is there anything she might like you to pray for her about. She says no. Well, you really, really appreciate all her help, it makes a huge difference, you hope God blesses her!

It was one of those gem-like moments -- exquisite and piercing -- where you receive and cannot at all repay and simmer in (metaphorically) speechless helpless gratitude. You can't very well write in a customer appreciation note thanking United that their staffperson lost the company a couple hundred dollars. You couldn't even thank her explicitly on the spot, because there were too many other customers at the counter. Her graciousness thoroughly, unexpectedly trumped your weak scheming. 

Which, you remember, is what you talked about at the combined Good Friday service at your college chapel two years ago, which was structured around Christ's seven last words.

It’s hard to admit that I’m not always needed. It’s hard to admit that, after all these years, I still throw tantrums sometimes. It’s hard to admit that someone has paid my bill for me, and there’s absolutely nothing that I can do about it.

And I think that often it’s hard to admit these things because admitting them means that I have to look at myself, and see just how helpless I am, how inconsistent, how much I mess up the divine image that God has put in me -- how wrong. Because when I look at these things, I get very uneasy and feel a need to do something: to be better, to hide, to pretend, to make myself a perfect person.

But then if I look away from myself, and look towards Christ, He says: “It is finished.”

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But those aren't quite the words you're looking for at the moment. You're tired, and distracted -- yay Kindle! -- and you really want to pray and you're kindof praying but you're being lazy. And then you remember that it's Sunday, and you haven't yet read your psalm for the new week. And you find splendid thankful words at the opening of Psalm 105:

Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; 

   make known among the nations what he has done. 

Sing to him, sing praise to him; 

   tell of all his wonderful acts. 

Glory in his holy name; 

   let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. 

Look to the Lord and his strength; 

   seek his face always.

Remember the wonders he has done, 

   his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, 

O descendants of Abraham his servant, 

   O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones. 

The rest of the long psalm charts milestones in Israel's early history, and you observe, with brief contrition, that it's usually easier for you to marvel at your insanely dense Williams heritage than your insanely dense Christian heritage (though you're all too good at the self-righteous anger against quoteunquote Christian political violence).

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Towards the end of your first flight -- it's just an hour-long connection on one of those dinky little planes that require a judicious arrangement of passengers if the flight isn't full -- you notice that the guy next to you has purple and yellow wristbands. Which isn't all too remarkable, since the yellow one is the ubiquitous "Live strong" band, but it also wouldn't be all too remarkable if he were actually wearing your school colours for a reason. The airport was only an hour from campus; one of your classmates, who will also be in England next year, is sitting with her father a few seats ahead, and there are two Sri Lankan master's students from the development economics program up and across the aisle.

So after the plane touches down you ask him, this might be a strange question (you're doing a lot of that today),  but are you affiliated with Williams? And he says yes, he was attending commencement. Turns out he put on the purple-and-yellow bands at his graduation two years ago, and hasn't taken them of since. It also turns out that you both share a major, and that his political economy senior seminar project group had won that year's prize for the delivery of an essay -- essentially for talking -- that you'd just shared yesterday with your two Pakistani and one Peruvian groupmates. And taxiing up the runway you exchange names -- oh man, this is weird, but you might have interviewed him a while ago for one of the post-recession newspaper articles you wrote about the job market. He vaguely remembers; he has a good job but is interviewing for other positions now.

Once you get to your next gate, you call one of your old friends who graduated a year before. You'd already told him you'd call, but as you're waiting for the call to connect you remember that he was the one who'd co-written that story on the job market with you two years ago.

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And of course it wouldn't be an episode from your life if it didn't involve relearning a silly lesson you'd supposedly internalised after an earlier mishap. This time, it's wearing a new pair of shoes without breaking them in. 

You indulge in amused recollections-- you hadn't broken them in because you'd been busy, and a lot of the potential breaking-in days had been rainy, but you'd still convinced yourself it was okay because they were one of your heavier pairs of shoes and would've been a pain to pack, and also because they were orthopedic, and orthopedic shoes shouldn't hurt your feet, right? (Which reminds you of the "caution hot" story. Sigh. Haha.) You'd ordered them shortly after the school orthopedist told you that you had a chronic sprain -- one of the ligaments in your ankle was permanently damaged -- because you were buying an ankle guard online and these popped up at more than 50 percent off and thus a very good price for leather loafers, orthopedic or not. (And you remembered being very intimidated by shoe prices in England, so you felt silly for the preemptive shoe purchase, and even sillier for signing up for old age prematurely.)

Anyway. You travel with chafed heels but very gently supported soles. Mmm.

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You get on your third of four flights, and the girl next to you gives you a look that, in your Malaysian primary school days, you might have described as onekind. Make that wankine. Moving on. 

She says she met you last summer during her internship, and then the look makes sense. She'd been interning at the research institute you'd interned at two years ago, where your supervisor was a long-time member of her church, and you think -- although who knows what tricks your elderly memory might be playing -- that she'd heard about that institute because her parents knew your father through some other church connection. Thereisnospoon.

She's very friendly and engaging, and you have a good time catching up, before you both get back to your reading material. 

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Which, for you, happens to be What Katy did. It's somewhat humourous -- the book too, but that's not what you meant -- so far on your Kindle you've read bits of Wittgenstein and Homer and Syed Hussein Alatas and GK Chesterton, but the first thing you end up ploughing through is one of the many books you loved with your siblings (and other animals, inside joke) ... more than fifteen years ago, ahaha. It's also humourous because when your family was flying to the U.S. for your dad to attend seminary ... fifteen years ago, one of your sisters -- who's always been an example to your socially -- picked her temporary U.S. name after the protagonist. (You'd picked a name that one of your good friends went by occasionally.)

You get to the end of What Katy did (although not really since there are four more books in the series; you've read two) and can't decide whether you are thrilled or mortified, because Katy's last words are an uncanny echo of what you'd wanted to say to a lot of people at the end of Williams: 

"I haven't been brave. You can't think how badly I sometimes have behaved -- how cross and ungrateful I am, and how stupid and slow. Every day I see things which ought to be done, and I don't do them. It's too delightful to have you praise me -- but you mustn't. I don't deserve it."

And you're really not sure, because she sounds so darn simpering -- but then you also suspect that your singing voice is more maudlin than you'd like -- but you really do like her as a character. And you definitely don't deserve it. Oh well. 

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Then you get off the last flight, and Pa and Ma are there, asking you if you want to stop for char koay teow and, at home, whether you want a regular towel or an extra big one. And you don't know what else to say.