Departures

Oak + Fort blouse (c/o) (similar)
Zara jeans (similar)
Zara sandals (similar)
Celine handbag
Celine sunglasses
Stella & Dot ring
Celine necklace
Location: Via Crescenzio – Rome, Italy

Just two short years ago, my next holiday was never more than a couple of months away. In between, I regularly hopped on domestic flights between cities in Canada to meet with clients for work. I wasn’t just an avid traveler, I was an expert. Air travel was my day-to-day. Nothing phased or flustered me – not security line-ups, not delays, not even going through customs.

…and then everything changed. Suddenly, the anxiety of departures became a fixture in my life. Midway through the pandemic, when travel had been a thing of the past for months and there was no foreseeable future when it might resume, my nightmares started. I was always in a crowded airport full of unmasked strangers, unable to locate my gate, in danger of missing a connection, constantly jostled at all sides as I tried to find my way. I don’t know what brought them on, but they became a regular part of my sleep routine, even after we made it to Paris and back again last October.

Departures fill me with dread now. I long for them and loathe them in equal measure. All the things that have never gone wrong for me before but someday could fill my thoughts, particularly as a new trip approaches. It was no different when we were packing for Rome. If I wasn’t hyper-focused on how we could both manage to stay healthy despite another uptick in COVID case counts, I was watching the weather forecast in fear of a storm that might strand us in Winnipeg.

A storm that actually did come, two days before we were scheduled to leave for Italy. We got away from Winnipeg with no difficulty, in spite of all the anxiety in the days lead up to our trip. Our departures experience at home, in fact, was one of the smoothest we’ve ever had. That lasted until the moment we landed in Toronto. On the tarmac, I was inundated with text messages telling me our next plane was delayed… and then delayed again. The messages just kept coming in as we wandered the packed international terminal, which was not actually conceived to fit multiple planeloads full of people. And then they stopped. We couldn’t get any information about when we might leave, if we were leaving at all. The whole experience looked a lot like my nightmares, if a little less fraught – at least I knew which gate to go to.

We were just a little less than three hours late leaving Toronto. Within an hour of takeoff, there was a call for a doctor on the plane. And then, three hours later, a second call. Both times, my heart stopped for a minute. We could be diverted, I knew, if someone was sick enough. I’ve been sick on a plane myself before, and it was a mortifying experience even though almost no one knew; I couldn’t imagine being in a position where a whole plane had to change course because of me. I felt deeply for both people… but I could also hear the seconds of our first day in Rome ticking away on the clock. There’s an eight-hour time difference between Manitoba and Italy. We were already losing daylight and now, it seemed, all of my bad dreams about departures were coming true at once.

I nodded off in front of a cartoon at some point – I think it was Sing 2. If there were more calls for the doctor, I didn’t hear them. The next thing I knew, the skies outside my window were bright blue and the flight crew served breakfast. We landed in Rome shortly thereafter, later than planned to be sure but without incident. Clearing customs was a breeze. Our suitcases appeared in baggage claim quickly. Guess what? We made it. Just like we always do.

Within an hour, we were in Prati, checking in to our apartment. Within two, I was walking down via Crescenzio in this outfit, in search of gelato, like none of my departures anxiety ever happened. That’s the funny thing about worrying, you know – even if all the things you worry about actually happen (although they almost never do) life still goes on and you still get to where you want to go, in the end. If you aren’t there yet, it’s not the end. Remember that.

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