As she sat in the back of the plane, feeling the weightlessness of takeoff, she wondered if life would ever be the same. Could she return to normal; the routines, the boredom and the malaise? Would it ever be enough again to know what was coming next, what was in the crock for dinner, the schedule and the mundaneness of it? She watched out the window as her craft took flight.
It didn't matter, did it? Whether she could see it or not, it was going to happen. She was going home.
She watched as the land and water fell away beneath her, her forehead resting on the cool glass, her head rocking back and forth. Laughter and chatter wafted from the other passengers, but she heard little of it.
She was leaving it behind, that rushing, heart-pounding heady feeling. It was slowly being replaced by the soft fleece of regularity. She'd be back to ponytails and sweatshirts soon, virtually invisible in her sphere of routine. She'd pack away the gauzy tunics and palazzo pants. She'd tuck the short, sleeveless black shift in the back of her closet, along with the daring red pumps. She was leaving that woman below in the sun drenched streets and the cool, shady cafes.
She was morphing slowly, inevitably, back into the dowdy, yoga-pant-clad mom of three; harried and hurried, barely showered and often hungry. She was leaving behind leisurely cappuccinos and croissant with fresh fruit for cold chicken nuggets, congealed oatmeal and icy coffee in a worn travel mug. Elegance floated away, down through the clouds, as humdrum banality pulsed in the engines that carried her toward home.
She sighed and watched as her breath created a misty cloud of condensation on the glass. She reached her finger up to draw in it and hesitated. What should she sketch there? A heart? Fleeting and meaningless, too simple and pedestrian. No, she was more than that, she needed more than that. Her finger traced in the wetness slowly.
First a dot, then below it, a small crescent. She closed her eyes and breathed over it, erasing then drawing again. A semi colon; this wasn't the end. She'd be back. She had to come back to rendezvous with that woman who wore the high heels and let her hair hang down her back to blow and tangle in the breeze. She liked that woman. She needed that woman.
She needed to be transformed, to don other skin, to morph and shift with the rising temperatures and the muggy atmosphere. It sapped others of strength, but not her. She was made new in the denseness of air. In that fertile, moist environment she was reborn. She was more real, more terrestrial than ever when the sun wrapped around her and invaded every pore. Below was her real home, her Genesis, the essence of everything she desired.
She would pause now, put her rebirth on hold as she raised her babies, supported her husband and built their business. She would don responsibilities like a heavy winter coat against isolating frigidity and blistering boredom, but she would return one day.
That was who she was, that freshness, that dewy soft spot on vibrant colors. She was not the washed out hard, pale pastels of winter, but the bright, raucous, thickly fragrant scent of exotic and steamy locales. She was not Vivaldi and soft falling snow, she was calypso and sand between toes.
As the plane climbed high above the veil of thickening clouds she closed her eyes and drifted. She would be back, it was only a matter of time.
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