Judy P's Tickle Trunk

Priscilla the Flying Pig

I am no longer as nervous a traveler as I once was. There was a day when I’d perch on the edge of the moulded plastic airport seat, afraid to draw a complete breath lest the the whoosh of my breathing impede my hearing and I’d miss the pre-boarding, boarding, and last call for boarding announcements, and thus my flight, and my friend at the airport on the other end would become discouraged when I didn’t arrive and would turn around and go home, lock the door, turn out the lights and dream of finding more reliable friends. My new relaxed attitude towards flying is facilitated by my habit of getting to the airport at least two hours early with a fully charged cell phone in my pocket. But not quite this time. It was, as is usual with the Parsons’s when they travel, a contrary sort of day. What my seagoing ancestors did to attract our crazy travel karma I’ll never know, but a trip anywhere is usually fraught with irritations and near misses. (I suspect that this is so for most people but my heightened sense of self-importance makes me believe that my travel annoyances are in some way special, c’est la vie!)  I had hoped that by bringing a small pink crocheted pig with wings my daughter had made, I could jinx my funky travel karma but it seemed not so on this day.

To start, we were almost an hour late leaving the house and had to drive through fog the likes of which I have not seen since the evening I took Jill to Rogue’s Roost by sailboat for supper and had the fog descend so densely and rapidly that we had to follow the stern light of Midnight Lace as she navigated her way back to Prospect Bay with the much appreciated assistance of the two Rays; the Raymarine VHF radio and the Raytheon radar: “Midnight Lace, Midnight Lace, Midnight Lace, this is Petrelle …. I’m going almost blind here, can you still see my bow light, over…..Midnight Lace, Midnight Lace, Midnight Lace, this is Petrelle, what is your speed, over.” The Coast Guard must have wondered “who let the girls out?” as I squinted and steered my way through the pea soup fog. I digress.

It wasn’t the fog making me late, it was the fault of a severe over-night thunder and lightning storm. Huge cracks of thunder followed the chain lightning which was hitting ground all around the bay. Jake described them as being the size of eight or ten regular bolts bundled together. Anyhow, they knocked out the power for a spell and when I awoke at four and saw the clock flashing I thanked the most recent thunderclap for waking me so that I could reset the time and the alarm. Later, when I sprang to my feet, forty-five minutes after the clock radio was to have come on, I realized that I had inadvertently turned the volume completely down when handling the clock. JAKE, WE’RE LATE!!! It mattered not, really, because the same storm had kept the flight crew from disembarking until it was over and they had to follow protocol for the regulated rest time which meant a two hour delay in their next flight. So, almost three hours for me to spend in the departure lounge. It didn’t bother me as I would surely like to get tattooed on the fast twitch muscles running up the side of my calf: “I’d rather wait than be late!”

Priscilla waits patiently.

I spent my first hour of waiting in a dazed state, trying to discriminate the airport dust motes from my floaters. I toured the gift shop. I toured the duty free shop, then I sat and put my feet up on my basic black regulation sized carry-on suitcase (really, have I ever once packed a suit? I much prefer the old English word from the novels of my youth; the valise.) I began to take stock of the landscape. I noted an alliteration of black telescopic suitcase handles, all standing as erect and as patient as palace footmen. These were a long stretch from the luggage I’d seen when first flying out of a Newfoundland airport; everything from small vintage suitcases with belts around them to cardboard Eversweet butter boxes tied up with rope. Times have certainly changed.

Yes, times have changed. Just ten years ago there would have been a perpetual rustle of newspapers. Now the morning news was being delivered via pocket electronic devices no bigger than a bar of Mackintosh’s English toffee. (I wonder what this promises for the evolution of the human eyeball muscles? Will there be a big resurgence in the need for telescopes once we can no longer focus on anything further than the length of our forearms. Will there become an epidemic of adult-onset strabismus?) The traveling worker-bees no longer rustle receipts and collate on the tops of their briefcases. I spied with my little eye a salesman tapping diligently away on his computer while his neighbour leaned back in his industrial metal airport chair borrowed from the snack counter, with his laptop on his thighs, his feet crossed and resting on a counter as comfortably as if he were resting them on the edge of his own rosewood desk.

The traveling middle aged women on their way to embroidery conferences and writer’s retreats were well represented. They read their Mary Higgins Clark novels while their ankles swelled. There was also an older entrepreneur, made young by his new partner; a thin aging hippie who could sit in an airport lounge seat with her legs tucked beneath her and her shoulders hunched  around her coffee cup like she was sitting on a floor cushion listening to Seals and Crofts and drinking Celestial Seasonings tea from a hand-thrown pottery mug. Was that a prismatic butterfly on a small wire spring jutting out past her left blue-shadowed eye?

Three of five other females within eye-shot were fussing; completely self-absorbed and rummaging through their purses, systematically trialling all of the pocket-sized items they purchased gradually on grocery days in anticipation of traveling: the hobbit sized packets of Kleenex, hand sanitizer and antacids. They arranged and rearranged on the seat beside them their over-priced bottles of plain water purchased at the gift shop, their Royal Wedding magazines, and the remainders of their airport muffins; so bland that they could have been any flavour from apple-cinnamon to liver and onions. (Just noticing these women instigated in me a session of my own rummaging and I took stock: my passport, check, my cell phone, check, my car keys… oh my God, where are my car keys!!!…forgetting briefly that I had been driven to the airport by my son).

Priscilla flies United

My travel jinx continued into my seat selection….I very carefully chose a window seat on the starboard side of the aircraft so that I could get a good view of the coastline as we flew south. Once the clouds cleared I saw that we were flying much further inland than the last time I went to DC and while the port side passengers enjoyed their view of New York City and environs, I stared bleakly at the vast expanse of green trees dotted with lakes. Then soon the descent – what a disproportionate number of baseball fields here in the States; easily distinguished by their beige diamonds. As well, a disproportionate number of beige sand-traps on the golf courses. All else seemed to be the curvy roads and roofs of endless subdivisions. Then the tires bounced on the hot black tarmac of Dulles International Airport and my travel jinx dissolved into a will-o-wisp and floated back north. I hummed to myself “O-oh Say can you see…” as I smiled and clapped my hands in anticipation of my short but sweet vacation on American soil in the company of my sweetheart.

Priscilla joins the pilots.