Journey Home

COVID-19 has prompted me to pick up my pen (or just open my laptop—same thing, really) several times. Each time, I’m intimidated to actually jot down anything into a paragraph. There are many things to be scared about, but that would be a different story. To start this story off brief and easy, it seems befitting to recount my journey back to this cozy little apartment where I’m typing these words. Likely, this entire endeavor of jotting down thoughts related to this pandemic will end when I embark again on a journey back to my university. My story might be a little bit tedious for that reason; I’m aiming not really to comment but to record what happened. Tracing back to what seems now an eternity ago, my messy fortress that I improvised over spring break was pronounced no longer mine. I was politely yet firmly informed that I needed to leave my dorm room in approximately three days. The grace period was denied, and I was left frantically packing, gathering, and giving away remaining groceries and cleaning supplies. Having bought them on Amazon and waited for a couple of weeks, they stayed for much shorter than the time it took for them to arrive. With the help of a beautiful friend, I made it safe to the hotel with too much stuff for someone to carry alone. Things weren’t the smoothest: the original flight back to China was unavailable because of a change in Japan’s airport visa issuance. The next day consisted of a huge panic when I couldn’t find the flight I’d registered for at the last minute. I tucked along a plush penguin who witnessed all of my worry.

As to be expected, my flight became an intense, multi-step journey: from DC to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, then to Hong Kong, and then back to Shanghai. US domestic flights were emptier than usual but not too much out of the ordinary. It was to my great delight that many passengers were at least wearing some type of protective gear, and the air onboard the planes reeked of sanitary wipes.

Many were in the same boat as me; migrating back to whatever place they envisioned hunkering down during the pandemic. As I progressed through each of these checkpoints, the cabins became fuller. By the time I was to fly across the Pacific, multiple people had complete sets of PPE. Though I knew that eye goggles would not provide much self-protection on a plane, it was natural to feel a pang when your neighbor is in a full bio-hazard suit: white plastic for skin, blue stripes for bones, and the thin layer of glasses for eyes. Not all were like that though. There were mostly just a lot of masks and gloves, which meant that I no longer stood out among the crowd. Long distance flights are hardly comfortable; I’d only like to think about the destination and not the process. If you’d ever been through it before, the overall experience was nothing too terrible. There was just this undercurrent of slight... slight anxiousness, bouncing off of the passengers’ faces, amplified through the tight cabins. You could feel the air tense as more people shuffled around in their protective gear, and more sounds of sanitizers whipped out of their pockets from time to time. It was a thin layer of weight pressing lightly on your shoulders, your temples. You could breathe through the veil, but it still lurked and was undeniably there. Some were not eating at all to minimize any potential contact with others, while some allowed themselves to indulge in refreshments during the 10.5 hours of sitting. I was guilty of indulging. At long last, that flight was over. And it was the final one. As I lovingly sprayed my little stuffed penguin with 70% alcohol and checked all the messages I’ve missed during my flights, I was stunned at how incredibly lucky I was. For someone like me who needed and decided to go home, airports were cancelling more flights closing their doors, snapping at travelers’ ankles. My little animal and I made back just in time, hurrying and hustling, not even knowing at the moment how pressed we were racing. That part of the tale had come to an end, and I’m now anchored back on supple, firm ground, relieved to be in the nest at last after quite a tiresome flight.

~Wendy Wang