Another World


As I packed my things into the small suitcase for the two and half day trip to Florida, my heart lurched for two reasons. I never travel alone and this trip could not be helped as I was going for a Mass Spectrometry training. The second reason was more profound than finding myself at the wrong concourse or not making the connecting flight. It was the trepidation of leaving behind the girls, the overgrown teenager and the not-so-able husband to fend for food, clothing and shelter in my absence.

That afternoon as a friend offered to keep the girls for a day and half, I was a bit relieved and while I waited for Abhijit to come home to take me to BWI, I put my OCD mind to use by vacuuming the house, cleaning the rugs and shifting about furniture in the living room. That gave my racing heart some respite.

I bid farewell to Abhijit wishing he could have jumped on the flight for the sake of company and for the first time in many years did not beep at the security check. That was a good sign I thought. I took my seat and bid myself to relax. The flight took 45 mins to take off for some unknown reason. I did not glance at my watch until we were ready to land at Charlotte. As I looked around I saw people getting restless while the pilot announced that he was sorry for the delay and hoped that some of us that would miss our connecting flights would forgive US airways. I looked at my watch as we touched down. I had 14 minutes to make it to gate C18. People were already lining up and I heard someone ask a co passenger "Which gate?". "C12" I heard back. And then following that "You can never make it". I looked at my boarding pass. It said C18. I looked at my new pair of Liz Clairborne high heel black pumps and wondered how fast I could run at 40. I had no luggage except for my purse because I had booked the doubtful looking Liquid Chromatography columns with my clothes into the suitcase lest I appear a terrorist. I made a dash for it as soon as we got out of the plane. The C12 woman was running in front of me pulling a largish stroller. I followed her in a mad rush. Darn! I thought to myself, these Americans exercise so much to keep their bodies fit and look at me! I was already beginning to feel the pull at the muscles after running past 3 gates. As I grew breathless and the gates to Concourse C never seemed in sight except for alluring arrows pointing in all possible directions, I began to doubt my success. But even so like a treasure hunter losing time, I ran as if my tail was on fire!! After running for God knows how long and how fast (because I feared looking at the watch) with the new shoes biting into my feet, I saw the C gates appear and Ms C12 slow down. Reaching C12 was one thing but C18 looked another lifetime away!

As I thanked my borderline cholesterol levels for not crossing the border yet, I reached C18 and was the last passenger to jump into the plane. As if the worst wasn't over, as we got to baggage claim, I waited for eternity and my little stroller was nowhere to be found. After moving around sluggishly for quarter of an hour the conveyor belt ground to a halt and I frantically looked for help. Thats for all the good luck I had at the security! US airways told me that they would deliver my suitcase to the hotel. IF it came in that night by the last flight from Charlotte, that is. Fantastic! I thought. I have no clothes, no columns, no spectra, nothing. And I have to get to the institute before 9 the next morning. Dejectedly I sat down to wait for the last flight to come in an hour later. In those 60 minutes I realized I was alone, albeit distressed but handling the situation quite well. I had no kids to worry about, no husband to take advice from, no bed to make, no food to cook, no home to go to. Wow! I thought, so this is how a single woman feels?? It feels goooooood, I thought! Why do we tie ourselves down in responsibilities and bend backwards trying to fulfill them unsuccessfully?? Why not have some freedom and time alone just for ourselves??
I could almost hear the barrage of answers to my simple questions on freedom coming from my mother defining freedom and social responsibilities! My little stroller rolled in finally from the last flight from Charlotte and I made my way to the Super Shuttle that took me to Courtyard by Marriott at North Point in West Palm Beach.
As I lay down on the clean sheets on an empty bed in the hotel room, sleep took some time to come--- by virtue of a 40 year old habit of having someone sleeping in the same room as me, but the freedom of being alone and single took the better of me. I laid my head on the cool, fresh puffy pillows feeling enormously happy.

The walk to Thermo was only 5 minutes by the watch and I did not mind the bruised feet from last nights' marathon. The training went off well followed by running my own samples on Thermo's instruments to double check that my methods were correct. My instructor was very patient and sincere and we stayed past working hours to look at the results which did not look very good one the first day but improved substantially on day 2.














I walked back to the hotel, asked the receptionist to take a picture of my smiling face in the empty dining room and she did! I ordered a Chicken Fajita from the local restaurant and though it was too big and too oily I consumed quite some of it before watching TV and falling asleep all alone on the beautiful bed that someone else had made for me!

The next morning brought a pang of sadness as my dream holiday had come to and end! Too soon! The day was fruitful and my results were excellent. I got my certificate, learned some extra stuff that was beyond my training agenda, admired the unusual plants and my freedom in Florida and by evening bid farewells to the people as well as my holiday!

My instructor who had heard the woeful subject of my missing luggage decided to FedEx my LC columns to MD rather than have me book my luggage. I reached the airport fairly early with lots of time to kill.

The first flight from West Palm Beach to Charlotte was uneventful except that I exchanged my window seat for a middle one with a mother (and daughter) who was eager to sit near her husband who had a middle seat somewhere else in the aircraft. After accepting many grateful glances from the family thrown in my direction, I closed my eyes trying to recount my few days of singledom!
The same flight continued to Baltimore. I got another middle seat this time. A white girl in her late twenties sat next to me on the aisle side. While I was hoping that the window seat would fall vacant and I could move out, a young boy came and occupied that seat. After a while we were ready to fly. It was a 1.5 hour flight from Charlotte to BWI. The girl next to me opened a brand new "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khalid Hosseini and I pretended to sleep when it first began.
Initially it was a small 'ma ma ma' and very soon it gathered pace and went from loud crying to very very loud bawling. For a while everyone on the plane that did not have ear plugs or head phones waited for the parents to quieten the child with a pacifier imagining popping ears to be the cause of the discomfort. But that never happened. Either the parents never tried or whatever they did never helped.
After a couple of minutes people started turning back to look at the child or more likely to look at the parents! Finally I peeped back through the seats and saw a child on his mother's lap, thrusting his balled fist into his mouth and straining every limb to get out of the seat while crying out loudly. I tried to catch his attention and finally did. His face immediately cleared up and he surprisingly started to smile. The most beautiful smile! The mother (she looked more like his grandmother) was making no eye contact with me and I continued to distract the 17 month old. But only for a few moments. A similar loud crying ensued from the other side. This time people were looking around with growing restlessness and irritation. As more kids started to cry, the girl sitting next to me and I, could not help breaking into peals of laughter. We did not understand who looked more comical, the passengers who looked so angry at the poor kids or us that were laughing so much! I glanced around a bit more to look at the other unhappy kids. To my surprise I saw another two who looked exactly like the first---just so identical except for the color of their jumpers. The mother (or grandmother) looked at me and in faltering English said "triplets". I looked at Esther (my co passenger) and she looked as surprised as me. Triplets! No wonder they cried at the same time!
At one point the lady had all three kids in her lap while the father got up to fetch bottles. In a flash the kids slipped out of the mother's lap and started to walk down the aisle. Esther who was sitting on the aisle seat reached out her hand. One of the toddlers came right up and hugged her with a huge smile. The next one pushed him aside and climbed onto my lap. The third one was stretching his hands to be picked up! They were ridiculously sweet kids. By this time most passengers that could see the kids, were warming up with smiles. The man sitting right behind me was possibly the greatest baby-hater in the world. He never glanced at the babies and on the contrary leaned over between the seats and whispered to Esther and me "some people don't know what is birth control". Esther and I broke into more giggles wondering if anyone on earth knew how to control the birth of triplets by birth control pills.
Finally the plane landed, the kids tumbled out with the parents apologizing. I heard "3 girls. Triplets. German. Tomorrow leaving".
Esther and I looked at each other thinking of the pitiable situation of the passengers on tomorrow's Lufthansa flight!
As we came out of the concourse I quickly took out my camera and clicked some pictures of the world's sweetest triplets. My trip to Florida ended. I was back to reality having enjoyed myself thoroughly in 48 hours of being single and unattended.