I’m sitting, mostly comfortable, in seat 37D of American Airlines flight 288 from Shanghai to Chicago. Going on hour four of a nearly fourteen hour flight, and I’m hoping to stay conscious for all of it. Dinner service ended a bit ago, and the cabin lights have been dimmed… so I might be in for an uphill battle with sleep.
I’m writing this because I’m too lazy to reach down and dig out my phone cord, connect it to my computer and work on editing videos. They need to be done, but since my computer and hard drive are already situated on my tray table and I have ten hours, I might as well procrastinate more. But the real reason I’m writing is because I’ve the need to reflect on my life in the last ten months. I blog regularly, and so I am not lacking in the department of getting things out into the world. My blogs have varied between moment by moment run downs of my life’s events and emotional pondering. I enjoy writing both styles, and I think this one will be more of the latter.
I had all these thoughts I wanted to share, but as I’m sitting here…hum of the plane in my ears above the sound of Elle Goulding singing… nothing comes to mind. Isn’t that always the way. There’s a moment where the dams could burst— where tears could pour, screams could burst, and words never allowed to be unsaid could be spoken — and in that moment you know you can’t. So you put on your best ‘little dutch boy’ face and stick a finger in the dam so it doesn’t burst. For me, usually I just want to get by myself before I let go. Public shows of the ugly cry or strings curse words is rarely beneficial. But then, when I am alone… the dam is no longer ready to burst. The mind is a strange thing that way.
I digress… my thoughts are still not appearing, but I’ve had a new one. Numbers. You may or may not know that I was a Math major in college. I graduated as a Math minor, but only because I couldn’t stay in school for one more year - I’m one class away from being officially a Math major… So that’s what I call it. (Again with the digressing) Numbers. I like numbers. I like being able to work with them. To test myself. Finding new ways to add or multiply quickly. I admit, proudly, that I do math problems for fun. (#go check out khanacademy.com) Numbers don’t lie…. as someone wiser and probably dead once said “two plus two is always four.” The world can be broken down into numbers. This web page you are reading is a collection of zeros and ones called binary code that the entire internet uses.
What do numbers have to do with my life? Well, I’m going to break down my first year in China into numbers…. Here we go.
10 - the number of months I was in China. The number of months I didn’t get to hug my mom. The number of months that I had a home somewhere new. Where no one I grew up with ever saw. The number of months that could produce a child. It’s mind blowing to think someone could have found out they were pregnant just after I left and they’d have a baby by now.
13 - The day of the month I use to count. I left the US on September 13… So I always count months based on that date. Oct 13, Nov 13, Dec 13, Jan 13, Feb 13, Mar 13, Apr 13, May13, June 13….
9 - The number of coffee mugs I collected from the various cities I visited. My idea of a vacation includes a combination of a few things: outdoors, fewer than acceptable showers, new experiences, food, and if it’s a proper civilized adventure - there is a Starbucks where I can buy a mug. It might be the one thing that makes me high maintenance. And I don’t care. I love the Starbucks mugs. I have one from nine different places around the world. (11 if you count the two I have from America that are slightly different)
2 to 7 - The jump in countries I’ve visited. Before I graduated China I had placed foot in USA and Canada (which almost doesn’t count) But now returning home, I’ve been to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong (which just recently was absorbed as a special area of China so….) and China. There is this ‘game’ of sorts that I heard about during the past year - It’s called the Travel Age. Your travel age is the number of countries you have been to. In the last year, I’ve aged from 2 all the way to 7. The point of the game is that your actual age, and your travel age should match. Which means, I’ve got a ways to go…. But I like this game. And I’m going to play forever…. =)
13:50 - Thirteen hours and 50 minutes…. The estimated time of our flight. We are making good time, and I think we’ll land 45 minutes early…. No complaints on that one.
# - This isn’t a number. It used to represent a number. Now it’s called a hashtag. Its a marker for other things. (#nosuchthingastoomany) And I am fully guilty of using them regularly. I don’t twitter - I ‘gram. Instagram may or may not be addicting, and I love it. I think I figured it out once that I ‘gram on average 8 pictures a day. Now, I don’t. But when I am traveling it is really easy to throw 10 to 15 up a day… so averaged, 8 is about right.
20 - I don’t know if I even want to include this number because I’m not sure of it… But it’s apart of my year reflection. I am guessing I’ve lost 20lbs this year. Now, I’m not certain if this number is even close. But I do know that my weight has shifted. I’m not carrying it around my middle so much as in my legs. All the walking and biking I’ve done has beefed up my leg muscles. The other indicator of shifted weight, is that none, I repeat none!, of my pants stay up unless they are elastic. And even some of those are temperamental. This could totally be a result of no dryers in China. Nothing has the option to shrink back up. I’m gonna get home, wash and DRY my jeans and we’ll see for sure.
% - This one isn’t a number either…. This is more of a concept. Percentage. Percentage of time, and of life that I’ve missed, and that I’ve gained. I’ll start with the more depressing end. I’ve missed so much in the last 10 months at home. My little sister’s first year of college, and her visits home. My other little sister got contacts, braces, and grew a foot. I missed it. I didn’t get to see her play volleyball or basketball. And those are the easy things to measure because they are visible. My mom probably scrapped, and she got her hair cut. My dad might have thought up of a new classic dad joke, and I didn’t get to give him shit for it. [Speaking of dad jokes, I just heard a good one. Here goes: Dad and son are are in the kitchen. Dad pours a cup of coffee and son asks “How’s the coffee dad?” Dad replies “Ah, like having sex in a canoe.” Son, confused, asks “What? is that good or bad?” Dad answers, “Means it’s close to water” Dumps the coffee and walks to the living room.] So there are a lot of things I missed with my family. Now, for the slightly more positive side. I gained so much in the last ten months. Things my family might not ever get to experience. All of the numbers above outline them. I scuba dived in Thailand. I saw Ankor Wat in Cambodia. I drank too much wine in Singapore. I ate scorpions in Beijing. I hung off a mountain, literally, in Xi’an. All of these things are fairly normal for me. I have put on this backpack, again literally, of worldliness. Packing my hiking backpack with a weeks worth of clothes and getting on a train is normal. I am so thankful for the opportunity to go and do and see all that I have. But it’s something my family hasn’t done. Each person is individual, but until this last year we were all very close. We lived similar lives in the same place with similar experiences. And now there is this very large block of different. I don’t really have a point with this observation. I haven’t had a ton of time recently to think about home and being different. But a month or so back I thought about it. And farther back than that we were told about re-entry, and how sometimes the places are the same, but you are different. I’m curious to see how ‘home’ looks and feels with my worldly backpack on.
I’ll be on the ground in about 8 hours and I’ll let ya know how the first few days go.
Until next time.
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