Gifts and Bows and Travel Woes.

It didn't work out that I would get on an airplane as planned and head to San Francisco and spend Christmas with Tim and Kath and Paul and all the others that I visualized sharing Christmas joy with for months when we first bought our tickets. Mother Nature had other plans for me and ice and wind and temperatures that hovered at just the right place to get in the way of a takeoff from Burlington International Airport. 

Six hours passed and I watched the screens that announced arrivals and departures and, of course, delays and cancellations. Chicago, O'Hare was the first to fall. Next was Newark, which started out promising despite several hours of delay. Travelers boarded, then waited on the tarmac. An hour later were asked to go back to the terminal. 

I wandered through the small airport, crowded with families and individuals, waiting, like me, to meet up with someone at the end of the flight or just get home to routines and what is familiar. I ordered a bean burger at the concession and sat one person away from a chatty machinist, eager to share the details of his work. He was showing photos from his phone to the woman writing Christmas cards, neatly stacked in front of her while she sipped beer and ate a mountain of french fries thick with gravy. She was politely asking questions, raising her brows on cue and offering pieces of her own history: Raised on a farm in upstate New York and teaching business at UVM, hoping, someday to work with kids on a reservation, teaching math. Did I think she was too old to do such a thing? I couldn't say, but told her that I still had dreams of my own; More school, hoping to continue, to always be a student somehow or another. She told me her mother had been a special education teacher, funny, how that opens up conversations even further...it's not like being a doctor with solutions to people's problems. No, I just identify the problems and hope for the best.

It seemed that if we all waited patiently and didn't press too much, the information would come that we could listen for our seat sections to be called and off we would go, first to DC, then on to the big embrace of our families or compact rental cars. There is something both intimate and impersonal about travel through airports. We all want something from the experience; Escape or work. We stand in line without our shoes, empty our pockets, dump our liquids. We raise our arms over our heads while images are gathered of our structural imperfections. We are gathered in close quarters and when it goes well we cheer and when it doesn't, it frees us to share who we are. The couple in front of me standing in line, transplants from Houston to Montreal, who "white knuckled" their drive to Vermont through the previous night, hoping to make their way home for a Texas reunion.

No promises were made by the airline and I spent the night at the Burlington Hilton where the price dropped over $100 when I said my flight was cancelled. Big, lonely room with a full view of the parking garage, but a hot shower and comfy bed, the best I could hope for after a day of waiting, quietly, patiently, determined that whatever the outcome I would be fine. Turned out that no one could get me on a flight before the 25th, and given that the return was scheduled for the 26th I opted to go home once the roads were cleared.

In a diner the next morning a family of five joined me at the counter. They were a cheerful energized crew, having just come from Stowe where they didn't get to ski after all as the mountain was sheer ice. The mother of the bunch told me they were happy to just sit around and read and be quiet together. They were from Syracuse and there were plenty of opportunities to ski. I shared my disappointment about travel plans, but that I would get to spend Christmas Eve with my daughter Sarah who would have been alone in Portland, and the wife, also a teacher, told me that my diversion was truly a gift, the time with my daughter. After breakfast they were driving home, fearless about the roads in front of them, figuring on six hours or so. The father joked that I was welcome to join them if I had nothing else to do. I have something else to do.

Gifts are supposed to be a surprise. They are supposed to be something unexpected. We should be grateful for gifts, no matter what the packaging. I welcome tomorrow evening and the opportunity to pass a night with my oldest daughter. I will miss my West coast family. I will miss Molly and her tan freckled nose on the mountain in Mammoth Lakes. I will miss my lovely Kate and her beautiful family in England, creating new traditions and savoring old ones. I will miss my sister Donna and brothers when they sit down to dinner together in Pennsylvania, a noisy bunch who will be laughing hard and talking about old days. I will miss Tim beside me. 

Christmas is always about family and love. It has little to do with geography. Proximity is wonderful, but the greatest gift of all is love. It transcends our disappointment. It transcends mine.

It doesn't require a bow.