The trip to and from Oceanside requires flights with a stopover -- it's very difficult to get directly from the Desert to anywhere else. The trip out to Oceanside was mercifully uneventful. The trip back, however, has been a bit... complex. And is still ongoing.
The first leg of the flight was fine; the bad weather had not yet arrived in the stopover city. It blundered in shortly after the plane landed, however, and then things devolved. The three-hour layover was sprinkled liberally with gate change notifications (I think there were ultimately about a dozen); when the intended plane finally arrived, there was further delay while there was "mechanical work" performed. Then decisions were made somewhere, a different plane was identified for use, and a full terminal change was announced. The hopeful passengers moved en masse through the airport, like salmon hopefully swimming upstream: up the escalator, onto the tram, off three stops later in the new terminal. The flow of people slowed and idled at the new gate. As we waited, the giant sign over the gate unexpectedly and unceremoniously changed to CANCELLED.
Oh, dear.
I wasn't speedy enough in the airline app on my phone to nab the one last available seat on a different flight later that afternoon. The best I could do was accept the rebooked flight the following day (today). Plan B took shape. I had a thoroughly mediocre meal at the airport, figured out a nearby hotel that was neither too expensive nor too seedy, and inwardly marveled at the submachine-gun-toting police officers patrolling the outside of the terminal while I used a rideshare app to arrange transportation to the hotel. I checked in, verified the time for the airport shuttle the next day, found my surprisingly spacious room, and shoved the coffee table in front of the locked door for good measure. Slept like a rock. Exhausted.
It's now the crack of dawn here in limbo-land. Windy, but the rain has left. Dark outside still.
The new plane doesn't leave until this afternoon, so I am left with ample time. These hours should be well-spent processing the visit to Oceanside, here in the quiet, propped up on fluffy pillows of a king-size bed in a city In Between. Yet it is difficult to do so. There is so much. And so much of the so much is made of ordinary moments: strolling, sitting, Scrabble-ing, talking. It seems almost surreal -- a life briefly stepped into for a few days. (Where does my regular life go during that time? I do not know.) I have been trying to recall all the tiny pieces and affix them somehow in the Oceanside box in my brain.
Inevitably, as with my last trip to Oceanside several months ago, I encounter in my mental review a minute moment that sticks, larger than life, and encapsulates the visit. The sight of a fish jumping out of the water. The sound of a squirrel rustling in a tree. The scent of the ocean on the breeze. The texture of the handmade blanket adorning the back of a couch. And I try to weave a spell around that moment, to save it for use as a Patronus. The spell must be strong, though, because the moment is strong and will threaten to be overpowering if it is not protected properly. I touch it in memory only for a microsecond here and there, long enough to become used to it without being burned. And the spell becomes complete.
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The ultimate lesson, I think, is to take the magical ordinariness of a visit to Oceanside, and to apply that same lens to review my everyday, regular life. Can I find minuscule moments to form as additional Patronuses, in between the mundane of laundry and grocery shopping and cleaning the rabbits' litter boxes and the eight thousand pieces of paper at work? Can I make the ordinary into something magical every day? Appreciate all of the things -- and all of the people -- in a new way? Make my entire life uniquely enchanted?
Imagine how marvelous that would be.
It's time to try.
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