The jetsetter

I’ve traded my travel bug for homesickness.

I’m writing to you from up in the sky, the one that you pointed at the other day while we marveled at the pink glow outlining the clouds. You and mommy are not joining me for this flight, and I hate it. Even though I got through TSA smoothly without having to manhandle your stroller shut. Even though I could order coffee without you tugging at my shirt to demand a muffin. Even though I found my gate without chasing you through several gift shops first. I used to get excited about traveling by myself because of how it forced me to be present. Now I dread it because of how it forces me to be absent.

There was a time when I reveled in being the kind of jetsetter who could land in a new place alone, and navigate by way of my whims. I’d look at a globe like a spinning bucket list, and view my long stretches at home as something to sever with a getaway. I learned to love travel while touring for poetry. Something about being invited to cross the country just to say things for an hour made me feel special, desired, almost famous – and other yearnings that I was a little bit too obsessed with throughout my early adulthood. The simple act of boarding a plane made me feel like I was an important person doing important things. I’d see parents wrangling their children at the gate and trying to shut up their squeals during the flight, and I’d feel overcome with a sense of liberation that I could just breeze through the airport and the rest of the world, without the baggage of dependents.

Today there are tons of kids on this flight, and they’re all shrieking at the top of their lungs. All their parents look exhausted. And I’m jealous of every single one of them. I miss you.

Before you were born, your mom and I both traveled constantly for our jobs, rendering our relationship a long-distance one, even though we lived together. At times we’d go weeks without seeing each other. We’d look at our calendars and highlight the rare weekends we could spend with each other at home. Most of the time, we were each other’s Carmen Sandiego, existing as blue dots on the other’s phone and syncing timezones to nab short Facetimes when we could. Sometimes we’d be like ships passing – she’d depart a few hours before I arrived, and I’d be greeted by evidence of her recent presence: a warm mug, a damp towel, a pillow still holding the imprint of her head. I got used to coming home to her dotted outline.

Every once in a while we’d manage to rendezvous somewhere random or I’d piggyback on her trips, but this hardly counted as traveling together. She would tend to her job duties while I wandered the city and ducked her co-workers, like the stowaway I was.

Around the time we got married, your mom had frequent work trips to Jamaica, while I curated an art show in Hawai‘i. We joked that we went on separate honeymoons, but we seriously ended up never having one. Instead, we’d keep leaving each other for beautiful places, come home to discuss how much we’d like to vacation there together, and then go our separate ways again. The last time mommy traveled overseas alone, it was to Paris in March 2020. A pandemic had seized Asia, and countries around the world were starting to ground flights. She got home just days before the entire world went on lockdown. We decided we never wanted to be so far apart, for so long, so often, again. We love travel, but love each other more.

As the pandemic subsided and it felt safe to fly again, we resolved to only go on trips if we could do it together. And then we struck the jackpot with you, a child who travels well. The first time we took you on a plane, we ended up stranded on the tarmac for two hours, and you just sat there, quietly gawking at the luggage carts. You’ve now joined us for over a dozen flights, and each time we land someone sitting near us coos over how calm you were. You often spot planes in the sky and tell us you want to go on one again soon. You might even love to travel more than I do. Which makes it all the more unbearable to do it without you.

I’ve made it a point to rarely travel without you – and when I do, to get home as quickly as I can. Still, these trips feel like small eternities. The flights ooze by excruciatingly, and throughout the nights I reach for you in an empty bed. I imagine returning to learn that you’ve grown a few inches taller, your voice has dropped, and you no longer remember who I am. I feel silly for thinking like this, and then remember that this was actually what it was like for my dad and his father. The family stories are scattered and full of plot holes, but I know that my grandpa left his wife and kids in Hong Kong for Mexico City, only coming home every seven years. I know that he worked at a restaurant with his own dad, who started new family and never returned to ours.

I picture my dad as a young boy growing up in a household of all women, and a father he only knew through the envelopes of money that arrived in the mail periodically. I picture the first time they met: my grandfather tanned to a shade impossible to achieve in Hong Kong, and smelling of the Western Hemisphere and cigarettes; my dad ducking behind his mom to hide from a stranger who smiled at him from photographs on the wall. I wonder if my grandpa missed his son, or even knew him enough to have anything to miss. I wonder if, on those long commutes across the world, and during the years away, he felt like an important person doing important things. I wonder if traveling alone was not the perky lifestyle I’ve relished – just what people did and still do to survive and feed their families. I wonder if there is anything more important than that.

Your mom tells me I should enjoy these times away – that they’re a healthy reset, a time for reflection. I look at the app I’ve used to track my trips for the past 15 years. It tells me I’ve flown over a million miles, and have been around the world over forty times. That’s a lot of time to reflect. I try to fit myself into the skin I was in when I had the travel bug, when I identified as a globetrotter, when I felt most in my element while somewhere foreign and thousands of miles from anyone I know. I think about all borders I’ve crossed, all the airports I’ve flown into, all the places I’ve experienced. And then I think about laying next to you in the park at home, looking up at the sky, and pointing at the clouds – and how that’s the only place I want to be.