Friday, December 25, 2015

Luck

If you know me, you probably know that Christmas Eve is one of my favorite days of the year.  No, there's no orgy of wrapping paper and gifts, no roast beast -- and no, I'm not even Christian.  But I love tradition and I love family and I love anticipation, and on Christmas Eve I get all three:  decorating the tree, finishing the advent calendar that my grandfather carved decades ago (a small bronze cast of Notre Dame rotates in and out of ultimate spot), helping my mother cook, watching the cats try to outsmart the Christmas tree, and most of all, listening to the King's College Choir's set of Lessons and Carols.

If my family feels holy about anything, it is architecture and music.

And yet -- it is Christmas Day and I'm still in New York City, lying in my bed and writing this blog post.  At 8:00 a.m. on the 23rd, I sent my parents and sister a gleeful email saying, essentially, "I'll be home in a little over twenty-four hours!  STAR WARS!!!"

(I've seen Star Wars.  I'm still excited about it, though -- you know, in general.)

I should have known better than to tempt fate.  It's a tale as old as time:  I taught all day on the 23rd and couldn't get out of the city earlier, my flight was cancelled because of weather and all the other flights to Cleveland were overbooked, and the earliest they could get me to Cleveland would be Dec. 25 at 7:30 p.m., but they recommended that I show up at LaGuardia on the 24th to go on standby for some other flights just in case.

When they called to tell me my flight was cancelled on the night of the 23rd, I sat in my bedroom and wept big fat tears for about half an hour.  I'd miss everything, and not just Christmas Eve; I'd miss the family viewing of A New Hope, opening presents, Christmas breakfast, Christmas dinner -- all of it.  I'd have one fewer day with my parents.

(And it's not like it's been the easiest week -- for example, on Monday I had to go to the doctor because my sinus infection had travelled into my eye.  Yeah.  That's a thing that can happen.)

I felt wrecked, and I felt guilty that I felt wrecked, because honestly, not being able to go home for Christmas is a pretty common problem and I am privileged to have a family to go home to in the first place.  During my bout of weeping, I emailed a dear friend and received her reply:  It's okay to be upset.  Go drink some wine.  Good luck tomorrow.

I started to breathe again.

So, friends: I spent Christmas Eve at LaGuardia airport.  I arrived there at 5:30 a.m., was at the top of all waiting lists, and got onto zero flights.

And the thing is, I wasn't alone.  People who were actually technically on the coveted flights were bounced off of them because of overbooking.  There were other people whose flights had been cancelled the day before, and there were groups of friends who were separated because of it.  We hung about gate C4 like hungry ghosts, waiting without hope but with a gaunt, hollow-eyed need: to go home, to be with family, to eat something other than Au Bon Pain or Auntie Anne's, to not be at gate C4.

(I do not recommend flying American Airlines at the holidays, by the way.)

The thing is, it wasn't a terrible experience for me to have right then.  Ridiculous as it sounds, I think I went through all five stages of grief while I was sitting there at good old gate C4.  I spent some time wondering if this was all karmic retribution -- for not giving money to the homeless woman, for not holding the elevator.  I found myself getting both vocal and irritable with the people who were complaining about their flights being delayed for an hour (being a teacher means that you get way too comfortable chastising people you don't know very well).  At one point, when I realized that I wasn't going to make a flight, I wept again -- silently, staring straight ahead at the plane through the gate window.

But as I witnessed the dilemmas of my fellow hungry ghosts, I began to realize how incredibly lucky I am.  I'm lucky to have a family to go home to, yes, and I'm lucky for all the normal things one is always lucky for, but more:  I'm lucky that I saw my family at Thanksgiving.  I'm lucky to have a family that is small enough and flexible enough to pause time and move Christmas Eve to the 25th and Christmas Day to the 26th.  I'm lucky to have been traveling by myself, and not have to navigate another person's stress as well as my own.  I'm lucky to have been able to afford the cab fare to and from LaGuardia, no matter how fruitless my errand was.  I'm lucky that my roommate is staying in town and that her friend is visiting and that I wasn't going back to an empty apartment, and I'm tremendously lucky that in that moment they were (without my knowledge) shopping at Fairway for the ingredients to a Make Becca Happy dinner in preparation for my probable return from the airport.

At a certain point, fed up with the world around me, I downloaded King's College Choir to my phone, put on my headphones, and pushed play.  The opening soprano notes of "Once In Royal David's City"
washed over me, and I realized -- in a true, gut-feeling way, with no sense of obligation or guilt -- this is okay.  This is going to be okay.  Music is still holy, and friends can be family, and oh, it tugs at me that I'm losing a day and a half with my parents, but I have a confirmed flight to Cleveland tonight, and outside my bedroom right now I can hear my roommate and her friend making coffee and breakfast.

I'm going to go out there now.  And as my student would say -- Merry Holidays, everyone.

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