The Differences

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

 The next morning, AJ sat at the desk jotting down details onto her notebook, details which, after sleep and a hot shower, trickled back to her mind, ran up to the present, then to the future to cover the day's planned activity: leaving. It would be a long flight back filled with the usual torture of unrest–it was all before her and she was anxious to get it over with.

But before all that, AJ explored the building a little more.  The bed and breakfast was in the “newer” houses in Edinburgh, the original domiciles of bourgeois whisky merchants, with elaborately decorated, high-ceilinged rooms with lots of space outside in front and behind the building. She couldn't sit in the high clear windows and ponder the details, because the clock was ticking down, they were leaving, there was not enough time to savor the atmosphere. 

She joined B and TwoSon for breakfast, where she ordered her last “full breakfast” of sausage, ham, tomato, beans and oatcakes.

They packed the car and navigated eight miles through muck and mire of tangled Edinburgh streets and turnabouts, through an figure-eight-shaped roundabout twice because they missed the first turn, to the car return. 

“Is this yours,” a car-letting attendant asked, holding up the clear plastic, "I heart Scotland" umbrella, as he inspected the car. 

“You can keep it,” B said, not being able to fit it into the lugggage. 

“Not my color,” the attendant replied, and chucked it in the waste bin. 

At airport security, TwoSon was snagged for a random check, and bewildered, confused and a little embarrassed, succumbed to patting down as AJ explained what was happening to him. 

In the airport shops, AJ picked up loose Scottish Blend Tea, and Toblerone for the boys; white chocolate for TwoSon, dark for OneSon and coconut for B. 

During the plane ride home, AJ filled the time with distractions, since an oblivious seat-kicker sitting behind her made sleeping impossible. The seat kicker didn’t tap frequently enough to warrant a plea, but enough to  cause AJ to think undeservedly badly about the clueless young woman.  So she filled some of the time with reviewing and adding to her trip notes, listening to Rob Roy and eating the distracting airline food. 

In Chicago, they trudged through customs, picked up their luggage, rode the shuttle to the parking garage for an extra specially long ride home through Chicago rush-hour, construction and obstructed traffic. 

Along the route through Chicago to her southwest Michigan home, billboards blared obscenely (and about obscene things) from the roadside, in such blaring contrast to the comparably peaceable highways and roads in the UK. 

In Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, he presents three things that bring meaning to man’s existence. The first is to create a work or to do a deed. The second is to experience something or encouter someone. The third is to change oneself and grow beyond oneself. 

This trip made AJ forget all the worries of home for a while, and replaced them with an new set of worries (challenges), like staying hydrated, navigating one-lane, two-way roads, sheep crossings, not falling off treacherous cliffs, not losing TwoSon on the Tube, etc. They were refreshing worries, worries and challenges that made one’s mind expand and strengthen. For a minute, she forgot about laundry, dinner, exercise, parenting (to an extent) and her neurotic self-worth meter. The trip added meaning to her life by giving her material with which to create something (this blog), letting her experience something different from what she was accustomed to and forcing her to change, to acclimate to UK’s rule, etiquette, conditions, weather and currency.

Sometimes, many times ... most times for AJ, the clearest appreciation, enjoyment, satisfaction and lessons learned came in hindsight; when she was going home; when she returned to her routine and the differences floated to the top of her thought and made themselves glaringly clear. It was the differences that made all the difference (what she also refers to as gradients), it was the differences that made her go and risk and experience, and it was the differences that summoned her back home again.

As she looked back on the trip from a distance in time, some differences and lessons still glowed and shone as intriguing to her: 

-popular history isn’t as interesting to AJ as old, obscure, domestic artifacts

-living, breathing, shining wonders were more attractive to her than cold shiny ones

-most people don’t follow the left hand walking rule in the UK, especially in the bigger cities

-there are a lot of sheep in the UK

-all travel hubs like airports and train stations have depressing atmospheres

-one-lane, two-way roads are stressful to drive 

-Scotland’s soft water makes your hair soft

-it’s difficult to not look like a tourist when you are one  

Until the next adventure ... 

Thanks for reading! 

Walking the Hills of The Scottish Highlands