Coming home
06/01/23 02:28
I have heard a lot of stories of problems for those who are traveling by air. The recent melt-down of the Southwest Airlines computer system resulted in the cancellation of thousands of flights leaving tens of thousands of people stranded away from their intended destinations. It also resulted in a huge pile-up of luggage that had been separated from travelers. We ourselves have experienced a few delays and flight changes. Once, on a flight from Atlanta to Salt Lake City, a blown oxygen canister resulted in the flight being diverted to Denver, which was actually closer to our home than Salt Lake City and we were able to rebook and arrive at home close to the time we expected. Another time, a cancelled flight in Denver resulted in us having to rent a car and drive to Rapid City because we were unable to rebook within a day of our intended arrival.Another time our son had a round trip ticket from Portland, OR to Rapid City, SD. Due to cancelled flights, he traveled the entire trip on a different carrier than the one on which he was booked. He made it home for the holidays, but never entered an airplane operated by the company that issued his ticket. I once spent my wife’s birthday in an airport on standby, missing flight after flight, trying to get home. The situation was caused by overbooking.
Today, however, I don’t want to tell stories of travel woes. Yesterday we flew across the country, from South Carolina to Washington, on three different flights operated by two carriers. Every on of our flights departed on time and every one arrived at least 15 minutes ahead of schedule. We never had to run through busy airports to make our connections. We had time to walk calmly and even pick up our meals in airports. We and our luggage arrived at home earlier than anticipated. We were treated graciously by airline employees and didn’t have any travel problems. I know that the experience of one couple doesn’t offset an airline cancelling more than 2500 flights three days in a row. It was, however, a good day for us. Our entire trip had only one glitch and that was that our luggage did not arrive in South Carolina on the same plane as we did. It was, however, delivered to our daughter’s home about six hours later. The inconvenience was minor. Airline employees were kind, understanding, and efficient in helping us with the problem. They kept us informed of our bag’s travel with text messages. Not everyone had huge travel problems this holiday.
Of course we had the luxury of traveling on days that weren’t as busy as the peak of holiday travel. And we were careful to book flights with sufficient time to change planes in busy airports. There are perks of being retired and having a bit of flexibility in our schedule.
I think that this is the first time I have made the end of the year/start of the new year transition in my web site when I have not been at home. In other years when we have been traveling over new years, I was managing the site differently and made the adjustments when I was at home. The changes seem minor, but they do require high speed internet. My menus appear on every page of my site, so adding a new page for the new year’s journal requires that thousands of already-uploaded files have to be replaced with updated versions. Fortunately, our daughter and son-in-law have good Internet service in their home and the change came off without problems for me.
As I continue to organize and modify my journal archives to make them more accessible, I have been reading scores of early entries. One of the recurring themes is “homecoming.” I wrote a journal entry about the process of coming home for nearly every trip I took during the early days of my journal writing. And I was traveling a lot. I was writing and editing curricula and attending multiple writers’ conferences. I served on multiple national boards at the same time. In those days, we traveled for face-to-face meetings that are all done by remote conferencing now. I thought little of making multiple trips to distant locations for meetings. When I served on a search committee for a national staff person, I traveled from South Dakota to Baltimore, MD for every meeting of that committee. I wrote a lot of posts about homecoming.
I don’t travel as much these days. This recent trip was our first in three years. We have, in the meantime, made some monumental road trips, so I have had plenty of homecomings. And we have moved twice in the last couple of years, so the location of my homecomings has changed. I no longer call Rapid City, SD my home. It still am a bit surprised to see Washington license plates on my car. I’m adjusting to being a person who lives within walking distance of the beach and within minutes of an international border.
Still, it definitely felt like coming home yesterday. Our house was all ready for us. Within a few minutes of turning up the heat, we were comfortably unpacking our suitcases and taking food out of the freezer to prepare for supper. There were fun notes from our grandchildren waiting with our mail on the kitchen counter. We slept in our own bed. I sat for a few minutes in my comfortable chair next to my bookshelves and read a couple of poems before retiring. In just over a year, this house has become our home.
Psalm 90 begins, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” It speaks of the sense of home that the people of Israel were able to discover despite generations of being nomadic people. If you just take the four generations from our parents to their great grandchildren, members of our immediate family have lived in dozens of states and multiple foreign countries. We are no longer nomadic, but we do travel around quite a bit.
The psalmist reminds us that home isn’t a place, but rather a relationship. Our dwelling place is with God and in God we find our true home. That’s good news for all travelers.
Today, however, I don’t want to tell stories of travel woes. Yesterday we flew across the country, from South Carolina to Washington, on three different flights operated by two carriers. Every on of our flights departed on time and every one arrived at least 15 minutes ahead of schedule. We never had to run through busy airports to make our connections. We had time to walk calmly and even pick up our meals in airports. We and our luggage arrived at home earlier than anticipated. We were treated graciously by airline employees and didn’t have any travel problems. I know that the experience of one couple doesn’t offset an airline cancelling more than 2500 flights three days in a row. It was, however, a good day for us. Our entire trip had only one glitch and that was that our luggage did not arrive in South Carolina on the same plane as we did. It was, however, delivered to our daughter’s home about six hours later. The inconvenience was minor. Airline employees were kind, understanding, and efficient in helping us with the problem. They kept us informed of our bag’s travel with text messages. Not everyone had huge travel problems this holiday.
Of course we had the luxury of traveling on days that weren’t as busy as the peak of holiday travel. And we were careful to book flights with sufficient time to change planes in busy airports. There are perks of being retired and having a bit of flexibility in our schedule.
I think that this is the first time I have made the end of the year/start of the new year transition in my web site when I have not been at home. In other years when we have been traveling over new years, I was managing the site differently and made the adjustments when I was at home. The changes seem minor, but they do require high speed internet. My menus appear on every page of my site, so adding a new page for the new year’s journal requires that thousands of already-uploaded files have to be replaced with updated versions. Fortunately, our daughter and son-in-law have good Internet service in their home and the change came off without problems for me.
As I continue to organize and modify my journal archives to make them more accessible, I have been reading scores of early entries. One of the recurring themes is “homecoming.” I wrote a journal entry about the process of coming home for nearly every trip I took during the early days of my journal writing. And I was traveling a lot. I was writing and editing curricula and attending multiple writers’ conferences. I served on multiple national boards at the same time. In those days, we traveled for face-to-face meetings that are all done by remote conferencing now. I thought little of making multiple trips to distant locations for meetings. When I served on a search committee for a national staff person, I traveled from South Dakota to Baltimore, MD for every meeting of that committee. I wrote a lot of posts about homecoming.
I don’t travel as much these days. This recent trip was our first in three years. We have, in the meantime, made some monumental road trips, so I have had plenty of homecomings. And we have moved twice in the last couple of years, so the location of my homecomings has changed. I no longer call Rapid City, SD my home. It still am a bit surprised to see Washington license plates on my car. I’m adjusting to being a person who lives within walking distance of the beach and within minutes of an international border.
Still, it definitely felt like coming home yesterday. Our house was all ready for us. Within a few minutes of turning up the heat, we were comfortably unpacking our suitcases and taking food out of the freezer to prepare for supper. There were fun notes from our grandchildren waiting with our mail on the kitchen counter. We slept in our own bed. I sat for a few minutes in my comfortable chair next to my bookshelves and read a couple of poems before retiring. In just over a year, this house has become our home.
Psalm 90 begins, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” It speaks of the sense of home that the people of Israel were able to discover despite generations of being nomadic people. If you just take the four generations from our parents to their great grandchildren, members of our immediate family have lived in dozens of states and multiple foreign countries. We are no longer nomadic, but we do travel around quite a bit.
The psalmist reminds us that home isn’t a place, but rather a relationship. Our dwelling place is with God and in God we find our true home. That’s good news for all travelers.
