Today’s accompanying tune: “II MOST WANTED” by Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus
I’m writing this week’s essay in the sky, on what is my eighteenth (!!) flight already this year. When people remark on how often I am traveling, I hedge, remarking that it’s not really that much, really, and few of those flights are taking me somewhere interesting or exotic. Oh, I say, I’m just going to visit friends. Friends in Seattle. Friends in Nebraska. Friends in Chicago. Family in Toronto. Family in Chicago. But writing it down, counting out my flight segments for the opening sentence, I realize I don’t have much to hedge on, not anymore. It is a lot of travel, hours spent crisscrossing the sky in the name of loved ones. Because finally, I’m able to rebalance an equation that was too far out of whack for far too long.
When I quit my job last spring, I made a deal with myself — I had to say yes to anything I could reasonably accommodate. If I couldn’t make time for these trips, these people, when I had limited responsibilities, I feared I never would. I had gone years without seeing some of my closest friends and I was feeling isolated, disconnected. The pandemic years spawned Zoom book club and Zoom beer pong and Zoom game nights, habits that etched themselves into the rhythm of my life while I remained in place. I was content with two-dimensional figures on small screens, glimpses into their lives a poor substitute for the three-dimensional lives they were living across the country, but a substitute that would have to suffice for now. I called people on the phone less now that I wasn’t commuting, and instead relied on sporadic text messages that were unable to stand up to our sarcasm and wit, despite our best efforts. I tried to meet more people in my new town, but there’s no great replacement for friends you’ve known since teenhood. And so, as soon as I could, I took to the skies.
My first flight post-lockdown was to Lincoln, Nebraska, where my best friend since high school lives. She was pregnant with her first kid, and I was adamant that I would not miss her baby shower even if it meant buckets of Lysol and more hours in the car than out of it as we drove from Lincoln to the Chicago suburbs and back throughout the course of a weekend. We listened to very bad 2000s music we loved in high school, wound through anecdotes of our locked down lives, I recapped my elopement she wasn’t able to attend. We stopped at every rest stop along I-80 and handily devoured meals from Panera and Portillo’s. In another universe, this would have been a truly unremarkable trip, one I’ve lived a million times. But now, it was the only place I wanted to be. The corn fields of the Midwest a sight for my sore eyes, the endless sky stretching into a future we might be able to have. A future with my best friend’s kid tucked up against me in the train around the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. A future where I was also able to meet her twins, a few years later. One where we went to concerts in Palm Desert and drank margaritas in the Mojave. One full of each other.
I previously had contorted my wants to fit within the bounds of my (generous) paid time off allotment, and I was never able to accommodate it all. I said no to other friends’ 30th birthday parties, to weddings and showers and engagement parties. I said no to group trips, to quick trips, to seeing concerts in places I did not live. Each time, I promised myself, next year would be the year. Next year would be the year where I said yes more often, where I made it work and got to have all my moments alongside my work. But once my time in the corporate world ran out, I realized I could have “one more year’ed” myself into retirement based on all the promises I had accumulated. So began the year of yes.
Yes, I’ll spend a week helping with my friend’s twins and hanging with the coolest 2-and-a-half-year-old on the planet.
Yes, I’ll make that weekend trip to Chicago work for my friend’s 30th birthday.
Yes, I’ll go see that concert in Seattle’s prettiest outdoor venue during a heatwave with one of the most important people in my life.
Yes, I’ll fly to Chicago, again, just to see a Cubs game with a childhood friend that has never been to Wrigley Field.
Yes, I’ll finally make it to my friend’s new home in Utah where we can explore all the amazing hiking Salt Lake has to offer.
Yes, I will finally go to Disneyland with two of my closest friends.
Yes, I will get permits for that backpacking trip I’ve been dreaming of and invite one of my best friends who just happens to have said backpacking trip on her bucket list.
And in the name of not losing myself, which I often do when overextended, I said yes to a few other things.
Yes, I will go to a foreign country by myself with a group of incredible strangers that I now get to count as friends.
Yes, I will take the leap and go on my first solo backpacking trip.
Yes, I will sign up for that race, the one a bit scary to think about for too long.
Yes, I will send that email, take that leap, open that door for myself.
Because I’ve said yes to so many people, I’ve been able to also continue saying yes to myself. Though I know my carbon footprint is edging towards something more reasonable for a corporation, I trace the web of my heart through the skies, my life only growing richer knowing that I am flying towards a moment, a weekend, an experience that I could never have without being there. Being present, physically present, is an act without a replacement, virtual or otherwise.
Each time, my heart grows, knowing I am slowly adding each experience to my life files, each mile accumulated comes with a memory attached. I can replace emojis with real-life hugs and stories to tell at our next visit. I can be awkward and bumbling and so full of love I am ready to burst at any moment, for I get to be with my people, in the flesh, after any time apart. That’s what my community requires of me, right now, to play any kind of role, and I am more than happy to do it.
Of course, I yearn for the days when I could walk up a floor, a hallway, a block, a neighborhood, to accomplish this, my community rooted in the same place I am. With every trip, I see glimpses of it, a life I could’ve had with a sliver of my community in the place they’ve chosen to call home. How fun would it be, I think, for this to be every Tuesday night, together with a few chores and a beverage? How great would it be to be able to watch your dog while you go on a last-minute work trip simply because I am close and I can? How great would it be to go to a friend’s birthday and sleep in my own bed at the end of the night? Until the moment comes when I eventually convince all my loved ones to settle in the same place, these glimpses will have to do because they are all we have.
Here’s to saying yes and letting those you love know how much you care, regardless of the miles between you.
- Megan
You are a fortunate woman - certainly to have surviving friends and family - but, more crucially, to have sufficient income to fund those eighteen flights. Not all of us do. Especially those of us scraping by on Social Security. And, you are lucky to have a rationale for the environmental damage your travels cause. "I had to say yes to anything I could reasonably accommodate." Therein lies the rub.
The earth and the air cannot reasonably accommodate that many flights. And, from the tone of this piece, you know that. So, your charming rationale ends up sending a contemporary message that is being repeated everywhere by too many privileged people, "I know I really shouldn't XXX, but I want to." The little three-year old girl pulls a sorrowful face and says to her mommy, "I know I shouldn't have eaten all the cookies, but I wanted to." Our beleaguered planet is being devoured by you and all the other nice privileged grown-up children. And, before your defenders write to say that I am just jealous, quite the opposite is true. I am content to walk out to my porch, sit and watch the miraculous mountain light cycle through its always surprising changes. That is priceless. It costs the planet nothing.