Travel Narrative: Glasgow to California

Entry for 23-25 Dec 2012:

Leaving Glasgow after an exhausting season of moves and crises.

Twelve hour time shift: up at 3am, 4 hours earlier than usual,

six am flight to Amsterdam, then 8 hours jet lag

by the time we reach San Francisco.

On the way back home to California,

I read most of second of two long-delayed

Australian Emotion-focused therapy doctoral dissertations,

finally beginning to catch up with myself.

We enter the US at Minneapolis,

with surprising ease: short walk, short lines,

American security officers efficient

but condescendingly proud of their equipment and training.

Bay Area rush hour a week before Christmas:

We rent a car and make the drive to Pleasanton,

Risky from sleep deprivation and jet lag.

Arriving at my mother-in-law’s house,

Kenneth is already there.  

He too has been in transition

and is glad to see his long-lost parents. 

Northern California is having a wet year,

storm after storm sweeps through,

filling reservoirs; mudslides block roads,

early snow falls in the Sierra Nevada.

Cool, fresh mornings make for good runs

for Kenneth and me, as we begin to

catch up with the intense jumble of each other’s lives,

clearing a space for recovery and reconnection.