Return Ticket

Maybe home is just a state of mind

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Flight 1431 from Chicago to Honolulu levels off and the wheels go up, and I look out the window at the landscape of clouds below. Some of them stretch out far and flat while others are thicker and bulge upwards like giant rock formations. It’s a different world out there, a desert of white. I think to myself that I could walk for miles across it if I weighed nothing at all. The central AC system is pumping out a nauseating mix of oxygen and new car smell that makes me want to crack a window – that is until I remember we’re thousands of feet off the ground. A little unsettling, really. Small block letters on the back of my tray table read “FASTEN SEAT BELT WHILE SEATED,” so I buckle up because now I’m making myself nervous. The flight crew comes around presently with the snack cart and I ask for a Coke and enthusiastically accept a bag of complimentary peanuts, making a focused effort not to spill over the middle and isle passengers as I reach across them. It’s my first time on a plane, and I can’t tell if I love flying or if I’m just excited to be on my way.

The guy next to me asks for water and politely refuses chips from the chirpy flight attendant and frowns as if irritated at the crossword of the SkyMall magazine open on his lap, of which he has only four answers filled in. I could tell him the answers to the other sixty without breaking a sweat, but I don’t want to seem rude so I keep my mouth shut. I find a pair of headphones in the seatback pocket in front of me and after a fifteen-minute search I’m able to locate an audio jack hiding in my armrest next to the volume buttons. I cycle through the different channels searching for something that isn’t country or jazz, give up, play with the reading light button for a while, then get bored and abort the whole operation. I notice the guy next to me hasn’t made much progress on his crossword. He’s a little older than I am, in his early thirties maybe. He is clean-shaven with close-cropped black hair, and I wonder how he isn’t sweating in his dress shirt and slacks.

“You ever been to Hawaii?” I blurt out, maybe a little too excitedly. He looks at me for a second, then tucks his crossword into the seatback pocket in front of him.

“I live in Honolulu.”

I have the sense that I’m annoying him but I press on anyway. “No kidding, how do you like it?” I kind of hate myself for asking such a generic question, but I’m bored and I’ve already committed myself to the conversation and I’m not sure what else to say.

“It’s home,” he shrugs. I don’t know how he can have such a cold and indifferent attitude about a place as wonderful as Hawaii. Home for me is Chicago. The Windy City. Now that’s cold. Try commuting an hour each way on the L train in the dead of winter – I don’t know if it’s worse outside or in the drafty refrigerator that is the orange line. I could wear three jackets, one over the other, and still walk out shivering. I work for a small wealth management firm, tracking bond and ETF yields and trying to not to throw away our clients’ retirement money. I don’t get paid enough but I’m too expendable to make demands and not ambitious enough to look for work anywhere else. Recently, the monotony has really been testing my limits. I’ve woken up in Chicago every single day of my life, and I need to know what it’s like to wake up somewhere else. Somewhere different. Last night I closed my eyes, spun a globe, and stopped it with my finger. I don’t know anything about Tajikistan and I don’t speak the language, so I chose Hawaii instead and packed my bags. Lots of bags. More bags that I need for a short stay. I tell myself I’ll use up my week’s vacation and then go back, but there’s a very large part of me that is ready to call it quits and just stretch out indefinitely in the sand until all my money has been siphoned away by burger shacks and surf board rentals.

“Do you surf?” I ask my neighbor.

“Never tried it. I haven’t been in the water for years.”

I’m incredulous. “But you live on an island! How can you not go in the water?”

He shrugs again. “Work I guess.”

I ask what kind of work he does, and I find out the two of us are not so different. He’s a financial advisor in Honolulu, he sits in traffic for two hours each day on his way to the business district, and by the time he gets out of work he’s too exhausted to even watch the sun set on the beach. In his indifferent way of speaking he tells me he was in Chicago on business, and he loves the city. Everything is bigger and louder and more real and it makes him feel alive. He doesn’t mind the autumn chill and he figures he could get through the winter all right with a warm jacket and a wool hat. He was sad to see the city slip away beneath him when we took off, he says. I listen to him as I nibble on some chips.

“So what you’re telling me is that you’d give up the beaches of Hawaii for the winters of Chicago?” I try to ask the question thoughtfully, but in reality I’m a little horrified.

He tilts his head to the side, considering. “I don’t know,” he says, “I guess sometimes you just need a change of scenery.”

This is appalling. “You don’t need a change of scenery, you live in the change of scenery!”

He laughs a little at my incredulity, but doesn’t amend his statement. He says I’d be surprised at how boring the beach can get, that I’m lucky in a way, because I get to enjoy the pleasures of coming in from the cold and warming up with a hot drink. I say I’d rather have a cold drink to cool down from the sun. We hit some sudden turbulence and both go silent. He puts his headphones in and I try to distract myself with my own copy of SkyMall. The crossword is on page sixty-nine. I try not to picture myself from the outside: a small head inside a small window, hurtling helplessly through the air. The plane rattles violently and suddenly I am less concerned with where I have come from and where I am going, and more concerned with whether I will arrive there at all. Who cares if I live in the city or on the beach, so long as I’m alive? The crossword is unimportant and far too easy, and I’m too frightened to focus on it anyways, so I hold onto my armrest and stare out the window until the bumps lessen and become strangely soothing and I begin to nod off. I awaken when the captain comes on the intercom and informs us that we have begun our initial approach to the island. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, he says, and I don’t listen to what the temperature is because I know it’s warm. I watch the clouds until we descend into them, and when my window goes white I close the shade and lean back with my eyes shut. I think about sand and waves and Honolulu traffic. I think about the guy next to me who is bad at crosswords and loves Chicago. I imagine trading places with him. Like the Prince and the Pauper, except neither of us is a prince or a pauper, we’re both somewhere in between, lost in mediocrity like everybody else. But we could pull the switch off! We do the same kind of work, we probably have similar qualifications, who’s to know the difference? Then I wonder if we cross paths again, five, maybe ten years down the line - only this time it’s me returning from a business trip and he’s the one going on vacation. I imagine the flight – this flight, but in the future – and I see myself sitting at the window again, looking out at the clouds. Is the future me bored of Hawaii now? Am I sick of gritty sand everywhere and sunscreen that doesn’t wash out? Maybe I’m so busy with work (surely I’ve been promoted by now) that I don’t even have time to go to the beach anymore. Maybe I don’t want to go to the beach anymore. Maybe all I want is to take a ride on an L train and warm up with a cup of hot tea. And what about him? Does he still feel alive in Chicago? Or has week after week of city chaos numbed him to the point where all he wants is a seat in the sand alone with the seagulls, or an afternoon in the shade watching the water?

Flight 1431 touches down at Honolulu International Airport with these thoughts still in my head. Flowery red letters on the control tower spell out Aloha, and I say Aloha back silently in my mind. I read online that it means both hello and goodbye. As we taxi to the gate my neighbor takes out his headphones and pops a piece of gum into his mouth. I wonder if he’s wondering the same things I am about place and preference, but somehow I doubt it. His main concern is probably getting out of here before rush hour.

“It was nice talking to you,” I say, twice, because he doesn’t hear me the first time.

“Yeah you too.” He smiles distantly.

“Can I ask you something?”

He nods, reaching down to grab his carry-on from under the seat in front.

“Am I going to get sick of this place the same way I got sick of Chicago?” He looks confused so I rephrase the question. “I mean, do you think we get sick of everything if we’re around it enough? Or do you think there’s a place in the world for each of us that we appreciate the same way every morning no matter how long we stay?”

He frowns a little, then shakes his head. “I’m not really sure what you’re asking me. I guess there’s a place. I don’t know.” I open my mouth to respond but then decide not to force the issue. As the plane reaches the gate and we slide out of our seats, filing into the walkway, I think to myself that I can’t fault him for not knowing the answer to my question. Maybe no one knows, or maybe it’s different for each person. Maybe I’ll know the answer in ten minutes when I step out under the Hawaiian sun, or in ten days when I’m out jumping waves, or in ten years when I’m still here, or in Chicago, or anywhere else in the world. I make friendly conversation with the couple behind me as we line up in the isle and wait for the doors to open. They’re visiting from Nashville, and they have a ten-day stay booked at the Hilton, the one by the water with the balconies that overlook the beach. I say that sounds nice, and I don’t know where I’m staying yet, I was planning on looking around a little first. They ask how long my stay is, and I tell them I don’t know. The line begins to move and I can’t help but smile as I grab my bag and begin shuffling forward. I don’t have a return ticket, I say.