The first thing I notice when I step out of the town car in the driveway is the smell. It's been raining, so the impact of wet pavement and wet lawn strikes me first... then I notice the distinct smell of the cedars and firs in our yard, some flowers in front have opened. I notice, under the glow of the front step lights, that the foxgloves have grown a good foot if not more, and the deer have eaten the tops off of the plants.
Inside the house is just as I left it... Easter decorations are still out, some packaging from stuff we bought for the trip is piled in paper bags waiting to be taken out to recycling. I go upstairs and I notice the slight hint of vanilla from the candles we have in our room... normally it's not a scent that stands out to me because I smell it every day. The air feels dry even with the rain outside... it's cool and refreshing and humidity is low. G is already crashed out in bed within 5 minutes of arriving home, D is laying on the couch with his foot up, and the house is quiet. I'm gathering up all those things that I use on a daily basis... after this stretch of being away I can't quite remember where I last dropped everything. My laptop, my cell phone, my car keys... I make sure I know where they all are and put them in the same place. I turn on my cell phone and let it cycle on, then set it down. As I flip open the laptop and let the last few weeks of updates install, my phone chimes. Chimes again. Normally the sound of downloading email drones into the background of my day... now it's loud and offensive... so I shut the phone back off (but I do plug it in to charge up, knowing I'll have it strapped to my hip tomorrow) There are photos I'm dying to see in Photoshop, on my big screen without the glare of tropical sun... music I want to listen to... but I'm exhausted so I shut everything down and go brush my teeth.
The face in the mirror surprises me. I'm darker, much darker than I normally ever get in any given summer, to spite having applied SPF100 on my face and SPF50 on my body every day - twice a day - and stayed in the shade except while swimming. In Jamaica I noticed it, but against the cool red tile and fluorescent lights of their bathroom, I saw a gradual change. Standing here, in front of my mirror on my beige carpet with my energy-efficient 50 watt bulbs, the change is sudden and startling. As I wander towards the bed I notice the absolute silence and I go to turn on our sound machine... usually set to a low rain sound. I turn it on and push a few buttons, running from white noise to ocean waves and over to frogs - which sounds as close to the crickets of Jamaica as anything on this device. I listen for a few minutes, laying on my soft bed under the down comforter, and quilt on top of that, and wonder if I can fall asleep to that sound here. Somehow the mixture of frogs and a soft bed with cool, dry air doesn't cut it - being home means the furnace is going to kick on, the bed is softer and full of blankets, and the sound I fall asleep to need to be rain.
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I appear to still be on Jamaica time - even with the long day of travel and no nap time on any planes, and the decidedly late night (even by west coast standards) I woke up at 5 a.m. - 7 Jamaica time - and couldn't get back to sleep.
The travel day had a few bits of adventure in them, but the flights themselves were amongst the most pleasant I've ever had. We woke up early - about 5:45 - and the realization that not one damn thing was packed hit me like a ton of bricks. I was up and moving without hesitation, and without coffee. I pulled out the suitcases, designated which were for checking, and which for carry on, and started pulling clothes and sealing them up in the space saver bags.
(A word on those... the REI brand - once again though more expensive - far exceeds the "as seen on TV" brand in every way.)
We had one bad incident while packing... for this trip D brought a couple of thick, sturdy containers to hold jerk sauce and Courtney had filled them for us last week. We stuck them in the freezer so they'd solidify... then we planned to wrap them in the beach towels and stick them in the checked bags for the flight home (figuring that between the coldness of the luggage area and already being frozen, they'd survive the trip decently enough) As D was working with one container, however, it slipped out of his hands and dropped directly on the second-to-last toe of his left foot. An 8 pound brick of frozen stuff - SMACK - on his bare foot while standing on a hard tile floor.
The string of obscenities that flew from his mouth was impressive.
He took some advil and iced his foot (with the brick of frozen jerk sauce) while I scurried around to finish the packing. By the time we were ready for breakfast he was able to generally walk on it without too much trouble, and he went up to the front office to check us out while I sat at the table sipping my coffee.
Breakfast was quiet... we had said good bye to a lot of the staff the night before as they were getting off work... this morning we had Shane and King working, and Aaron the security guard was just ending his overnight shift. We were fully packed and ate breakfast, talking to a couple of the guests we'd met in the previous couple of days... after finishing up our food D went over to the bar to play the last few games of dominoes before Ty came to pick us up. Once it was time to head out it was another long round of hugs and "see you next time"s... we'd spent so much time here hanging out and getting to know everyone so much better, it was really tough to leave.
The drive to the airport was fun, though, because one of the girls from the large group was also heading out and she rode in the van with us, which made for a lot of fresh conversation on our final drive over the potholed roads at breakneck speeds. We did have to stop at one point, though, because S realized he didn't have his wallet in his pocket. After a few phone calls back to the hotel and a frantic search through his bags he did find it, in the pocket of the shorts he'd worn the night before.
Once at the airport we got through security without much issue and wound our way down the length of the airport to the far end to find our gate. There wasn't time to sit for a long lunch (we were boarding in 10 minutes) so we ran through the snack area of one of the stands and grabbed a few things to tide us over.
The flight was relatively uneventful... take off was fine, there was a bit of turbulance, landing was fairly smooth. G sat by the window and enjoyed watching the clouds below and seeing the islands as we flew around Cuba and back into US air space.
The airport in Charlotte, however, was the only part of the journey that was borderline clusterfuck.
We landed 15 minutes late due to weather, and our gate was occupied by another plane... which delayed us another 20 minutes. By the time we were parked and off the flight we had roughly 40 minutes to get through immigration, customs, baggage claim, recheck bags, back through airport security, and run the length of the airport to the other end of another concourse and be on our next flight. The realization of this came over me as we scurried down the corridor to the basement level for immigration and saw the long winding ropes guiding people around to the immigrations... and across the room I saw another international flight was dumping into the same basement, racing into the same line.
The island must have still been with me though, because I just shrugged - what can you do? - and got in line. Chances were good we would miss our flight because of this, but there was nothing we could do about it except get in line and cross that bridge if we got to it. The line moved pretty quickly, but as we wound our way towards the front I looked back and saw that security was adjusting the ropes, making the pathways much, much longer for the third flight of passengers that was now streaming in.
Through immigration, down a corridor we got to baggage claim, where it seemed the luggage of all the passengers still stuck in immigration behind us had piled up on the belt. It wasn't too long before our bags dropped - just about clogging the entire process, and we nabbed them, raced through customs, rechecked the bags and on down the way to security we went.
The line for security was thankfully quite short (only 3 people in front of us) so we scurried through and now only had to make it to the gate - I noted briefly that our flight was delayed by 15 minutes, but didn't stop to check my watch... I just ran. (If we missed it we missed it, but knowing that we might actually make it fueled me to pick up the pace) We arrived to see an empty boarding area, employees calmly standing by the ticket scanner, and they just nodded and said "the plane is still here."
The flight was scheduled for 6:10, they held it over to 6:25 because of our connection being late... then once on board the announced that they were holding it even longer. There was a connection flight from Miami which was running late, and they had on board 19 military guys who were scheduled to be on our plane. While we waited we saw a few more people from our flight who had just made it on board, but we still hadn't seen S. Then came the guys in fatigues. As each of the 19 came on board I heard nearly all of them say "Good evening" and "Sorry" and "thanks for holding the plane".
Once they were on board and settled, and their luggage was on board below, the airplane door was closed and the plane pushed off. No S. (He and a few other passengers were so far behind us in customs that they couldn't make it through in time, even with the extra delay)
From there the flight was thankfully uneventful - just very long. The guy sitting next to me was quiet, either read his book or napped, while I was on the netbook nearly the entire flight. I couldn't eat most of what was served for dinner, but neither D nor G wanted their salads, so I had three bowls of that along with the beef tip sort of thing they served me.
Once we landed we got off the plane easy enough, though D's toe was now black and blue and swelling from being down for so long. Our bags came up into baggage claim first, we nabbed them and our driver and went straight out to the town car for the ride home. Once back in the house, luggage out in the kitchen, I quickly went through the bags.
The jerk sauce survived, still partially frozen, so both bottles went into the freezer... the coffee we bought seems to all be there (though I honestly didn't count them so I don't know if any was swiped during inspections) and the bag of seashells G and I collected was left alone in the safety of the helmet where I'd packed it. All in all, I think we arrived with everything we packed still in tact.
Now there is laundry to face and bags to unpack and food to buy... but it's Sunday, and I woke up at 5 and I have plenty of time to face that sort of stuff... after I have my coffee.
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