Home Again, A Fortnight Later

My dear friend T. emailed me shortly after I returned from Scotland and mentioned that it was usually at the two week mark when the real “I’m back now” feelings settled in for her. It appears that I’m the same way. Two weeks ago this time almost exactly, I was arriving safely (and gratefully so) at Chicago O’Hare’s airport. I’m now back into every routine I normally have in autumn: kids Mondays and Thursdays and every other weekend beginning Thursdays; choir practice Wednesdays; church at 8:15 on Sundays; work M-Fri, 9 to 5; our first opera of the season next week.

At church on Sunday, which was a really great service musically- fabulous selections, both anthems and hymns, and the choir truly felt like an ensemble- at an early point in the sermon I found myself thinking, “Two weeks ago I was in that tiny Anglican church in Stornoway.” Two weeks ago I was introducing myself to people because my accent gave away that I was a visitor, crying after the service as I walked through the quiet streets back to my B&B, trying not to cry but the service was so heartachingly real led by a young couple (there were maybe 25 of us there, total), wandering down to the harbor and thinking that unbelievably, tomorrow (Monday of that week) I would have to leave and come back to… the regular routine. And I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want to leave.

There is something about being on a holiday that makes the time both expand beyond measure and also shrink so quickly when the time passes so fast; this isn’t news to anyone, but as I took a walk today after work it, of course, made me think of my week when I didn’t have a car, when I walked everywhere and the grocery store and the Lews Castle and the post office were all within a 5 minute walk. That Sunday afternoon when most everything was closed, I spent a goodly while repacking, which of course made me melancholy but not overly so, as I still had hours to go, and one last day in Edinburgh, but then I just lounged. I wrote, and had the cup of noodles that I’d bought on Saturday, and wrote some more, and petted the cat when she came by to visit, and even took a short nap, listened to music, and lay on “my” bed and looked at my friend Amy’s card I’d brought with me, and the framed card from edrys in their now-familiar places on my bedside table, and was so grateful for that time, and my little room with the open window and the sound of wind and rain (of course! It rained all day Sunday) and thinking with unreality, “Well, in two days I’ll be back in Nashville.” I really did live in the moment while I was there, trying to resist counting down the hours until I would have to return, probably a habit I should pursue more often. Living in the moment, that is.

While I was in the Outer Hebrides, living the crazy trip I had been quasi planning for months, from time to time I would mentally place myself back in my stepson’s room, showing him on his globe where I was going, and think how absolutely wonderful it was that my family and friends were all doing there thing back over in the States while I was doing my thing across the ocean, up off the northwest coast of Scotland. That we all were doing as we had to, or wished to, all on this big, round earth. I think about that a lot since I have close friends across the globe in Australia, and a brother in India, but with a shorter distance it made it almost more real, though as I sniffled my way home from that church service on Sunday, it just made me sad. I walked home in the drizzle, looking at the forest planted by a man who had made what would be trillions of dollars today in the opium trade around the turn of the century, and realized that as I thought of friends and family six hours behind me, that it wasn’t with the adventurous, “Yes! And how cool that I’m off being myself and they’re happy over there.” It had become, “Hmm. And now this is going to be a moment that I’m living now and I’ll end up writing about in my livejournal or in my diary in the future because this, too, will pass. I’ll have my last few hours wandering around the ‘bustling metropolis’ of Stornoway, and then I’ll call the same taxi driver I had when I arrived, and then I’ll be in Edinburgh, and then… oh then I’ll be in the Heathrow airport and then I’ll be flying, flying. And back home.”

And here I am, two weeks later.

Coming back is also interesting in trying to explain it to other people. Coworkers, fellow singers, anybody. People outside of my close friends seemed to be fascinated that I went by myself (some seemed to be rather envious). Close friends and people who have known me for a long time simply ask, “So, which cold country are you going to this year?” But being asked, “How was your trip?” gets a bit old. I began to settle on, “Mostly wonderful; had some low points, lots of rain and wind, but you don’t go to the Hebrides for the weather. Mostly it was absolutely what I wanted and needed and I’m so glad I went.”

How else to say- Brilliant. Dismal. Introspective. Quiet. Windywindywindy. Rainyrainyrainy. Joking with the B&B owners. The white cat who became my friend. Being self-deprecating in a bus shelter watching the rain blow horizontally. Watching crofters do their thing herding sheep during a blazingly blue-skied 45 minutes near yet another bus shelter. Listening to women in a thrift shop speak Gaelic to each other and me not having a clue. Eating lunch near Lews castle then moving myself and my soggy food under a tree as it, of course, began to rain. Wandering the grocery store aisles and deciding, after much thought, *not* to get the Harry Potter chocolate cake mix because it wouldn’t fit in my suitcase. The bus driver who let people off at their houses (and by name) on the northernmost tip of the isle of Lewis, then him looking back at me, rather startled to realize that there was one, last unaccounted-for person still on the bus. Seven evenings in a row where I sat in a comfy chair in front of the window and wrote pages and pages on my purple legal pads, followed each day by manic one-hour free internet typing sprees at the one-room Stornoway library. Chipping my tooth. Singing hymns in a church so small (or minus an organist) there was no organ, so we sang along with CDs of the music. Touching the Callanish standing stones I saw in that New York Times article back in July.

Being me, and that was all.

Maybe I’ll perk up when I can see some of my pictures. Which, yes, I will of course invite you all to look at as well.