As the other passengers board, she has second thoughts. She pauses. The line up, only steps away, seems daunting, looming even.
Vacationers, fathers returning to their daughters and sons, a grandmother who won’t have anything to do with her hands because the very existence of the terrorists means she had to pack her knitting in a suitcase and check it – they all pursue the gate, handing over their tickets and passports nonchalantly, never blinking with the kind of white-knuckled fear she feels. This is an everyday for them; and the first of the rest of her life.
What if she’s making a mistake? She knows she is. But what if she can’t undo the harm she’s causing? What if her family will never understand why she needs to do this thing, why two weeks isn’t long enough to find a new home, new everything, a new life for them? What if they only see selfishness in her actions: removing herself and her smaller unintentional partner in crimes? What if the plane crashes, like that other one did, and she never gets to set foot on that dark earth across the ocean, or once again run her hands through the hair that’s grown thick, fiercely at the nape of her daughter’s neck ever since her first hair cut? What if she returns after setting up their future, to find that they just won’t let her leave?
So many paralyzing questions, so few minutes left until the last moment she can wait.
The line is gone, and she looks at the attendant desolately, preparing herself for the words that will apologetically fall from her mouth. Deep breath in, deep breath out. No, she can’t do it. She just… can’t. Passers-by can see her struggle – it’s magnified in every wrinkle around her eyes, by the way that she keeps looking at the exit and at the entrance. It’s etched in her frozen legs. She can’t let her daughter down.
“Sorry,” she says, “I thought I forgot something, for a moment, there. Will we be leaving on time?”
This post is a response to the {W}rite-of-Passage challenge. See more by clicking the linky, below:
