Welcome home

Is it silly to have a “favorite flight”?

I mean, we have favorites in many categories: favorite TV show, favorite aunt, favorite ice cream flavor, favorite teacher, favorite book from junior high, favorite comfort food, favorite color, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum (if you need answers to any of these, please feel to write and ask for my favorites in these categories). I fly very often, so I guess it should come as no surprise that I have a favorite flight. This flight just seems magical, maybe because it seems to whisk me from one world to the other more swiftly than usual. It leaves at bedtime in one world and arrives with a whole day ahead of it in the other world. And on my favorite flight from Jordan to the United States, that magical Delta flight that leaves Jordan at about midnight and lands at JFK airport in New York at 5:30 a.m., I have two favorite moments in my re-entry to the United States.

When I come through passport control, I give them the passport and paperwork that marks me as a U.S. citizen but a resident of Jordan, the passport control officer asks why I am living in Jordan. I explain that I am teaching there, he stamps the passport, and invariably this officer of immigration control says to me, “Welcome home.” A short, but very sweet, sentiment. I don’t know if they are trained to say this to the ex-pats, and I think not, because I have entered the U.S. in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago too, and I don’t get that lump-in-the-throat-inducing, “Welcome home.” I smile, and head toward getting my bags. And I treasure the remark.

This time when I came home to New York and Cincinnati for spring break, I waited for it. And like the blossoms on the trees every spring, it came as expected, and is more beautiful than you expect. I can’t say why I find this comment so heart-warming, but I do find coming to the United States for breaks more invigorating, and yes, more heart-warming, than traipsing around as a tourist somewhere else new to me. I am sure some people thought I would never tire of traveling and discovering new places, and I am not sure I am tired of it, I just prefer coming back home for a respite.

The other moment I rank as a favorite is about a half hour after the first with the encounter with the passport agent. I have retrieved my bags (never once have they been lost or held up at JFK!) and gotten on the airtrain shuttle that takes me to the place where I can connect to the subway system of New York. As we swing by this one locale, there it is: the next favorite moment—the sun rising over New York City. Again, you expect the dawn, but it can be more beautiful than you expected. Streaks of orange or red or a yellow ball reaching up to welcome all of us to the new day. At this moment the trip feels as it will be perfect—the dawn of a break, the break of dawn.

Two favorite moments…

And the trip did not disappoint. I crammed as many of my favorites as possible into a few days in New York and even fewer in Cincinnati. My breaks consist less of seeking out newness, but greeting old favorites, reveling in the friendships and sights of my American home. As usual, that first day plays out as they always do now from this magical flight. I arrive by subway to my friend Christy’s house, at about 7:30 a.m. with a real New York Times newspaper suddenly in my hand. Christy has gotten up earlier than usual and prepared her monumental oatmeal. (While oatmeal may not be considered a monumental breakfast choice, hers is crowned with walnuts and blueberries and strawberries.) Shave and shower and by 9:00 there is still a whole day in front of us to enjoy! See why that flight is my favorite?? You maximize your time buzzing around an exciting city and not just sitting on a plane! We will look at what plays to see, and by the early afternoon we will have walked through the park, had a trip to the Met, and had the lunch special at Ivy’s Chinese food on 72nd Street.

The rest of the vacation there is full of favorites: lunch with Kate, seeing Gary, visiting with dear Anne and enjoying a fabulous dinner, talking with as many people as I can, theater, walking in the park, heck, just walking around. Amman is a not a walking city, so just walking the blocks in Manhattan is thrilling.

By the end of the visit we will have had my favorite pizza at Patsy’s on West 74th Street (oh, and their olive oil is the best in the world!) and my favorite Vietnamese food at Saigon Grill on Amsterdam and West 89th Street—I must admit I felt a twinge of guilt as I entered since some people were picketing the other day, claiming they don’t pay their workers enough—oh, I felt a little bad, but no one else makes my favorite Papaya and Beef Salad! We enjoyed Easter services at Advent Lutheran Church at Broadway and West 93rd Street, with Pastor Brown--one of my favorites--preaching as eloquently as always. Oh, and this is fun--guess who sat behind me in church?? Tina Fey!! I found reasons to keep turning around and checking that this was indeed the TV star. One time, she just nodded at me, kind of a reassuring nod that yes, indeed, I was seated in front of a TV star. Since I am on the name-dropping part of the blog, I also saw Neil Simon, chatted with the actress who was Paul Reiser's mother on Mad About You, and sat in the airport with TV news hounds Harry Smith, Lester Holt and Dan Rather. I had to find a way to shoehorn in the celebrities with whom I rubbed elbows!

What a rush of favorites on that trip! Then I head out to LaGuardia (driven by that favorite Gary after a breakfast with bacon) for a flight to Cincinnati. There, in the span of a few days, I will indulge in more favorites: my family, of course, how can they not be among the favorites on my Planet Favorite! There will be a buffet at the Farm, a BLT at the Imperial Diner with Pam, ice cream at Graeter’s, and I could go on and on (some will quip that I have!) that my trip is simply my chance to go through the favorites of my life.

I come to the end of the trip, and the trip always ends the same, with another of my favorite comments said so simply and heartwarmingly. When it is time to go, my dad takes me to the airport, and after we have checked the bags and weighed them (he always comes inside in case there is excess stuff he needs to take home) we come to the point of good-bye. Then my dad, with those soulful, wise Andy-Griffith-like eyes, looks at me and says, “Thank you for coming home.”

What great book-ends of a trip! That passport control agent, so anonymous to me but so kind with his “Welcome home,” and then that greatest of men, my father, thanking me for coming home. It is hard to beat those comments. My colleagues went to many places over the break, among them, Turkey, Italy, Egypt, Spain, Africa, Thailand, England, but I went home. And loved every minute of it.

Sad to say, that favorite flight is going away. I learned in the last couple weeks that Delta is suspending service to Amman, and so on June 1st, there will be no more of those magical flights. I will be fine; I will fly either to Paris and then Cincinnati, or Chicago then Cincinnati, and Royal Jordanian Airlines will still fly to New York—it just leaves mid-day and gets there mid-afternoon. Not much magic in that flight!

But I took some comfort in a sight yesterday, when I returned to Jordan after spring break, a new banner greeted me. HSBC, one of my two banks in Jordan (don’t get me started on the inane practices of Jordanian banks!) had a new banner shouting, “Welcome Home.”

It may not be those nice passport agents in JFK in the pre-dawn hour, but it was a kind greeting. I’ll take that!