Flight 164 to Iceland

            by Sarah Woodard

 

“BYE!” I yell to my mom as I am being shoved further towards the security check at the airport. So many people are forming a line behind me that it has become impossible to see my mom waving me goodbye. I know she is though, she always does. I check my ticket to see which gate I’m on for the millionth time. I always check but never store the number into my head. It’s like when I want to know what time it is so I look quickly at my watch and am satisfied for one moment until I realize I don’t remember what I saw. Gate 53, I can do this. I travel alone all the time but that never stops me from getting worried. I worry about everything: Am I on time? Am I forgetting anything? Am I getting on the wrong plane? Am I sitting in the wrong seat? But once we take off I love it. Everything about it, how I get my own personal cocoon for seven hours, and how I can sleep all I want. The anticipation of my final destination also makes traveling more thrilling. Flight 164 for Iceland is boarding in five minutes. That’s me. I step into the line that probably begun forming hours before I got there. Iceland, it’s such an odd place to visit during my summer vacation. There is no reason in the world I would spend thousands of dollars on a trip to Iceland if my best friend in the world didn’t live there.

Her name is Hanna Sophia Thormar; we were born two months apart from each other and were immediately inseparable. One of my earliest memories of her and me playing together is caught on video, which could be why I remember it so vividly. We must have been no older then three years old playing on plastic tricycles in her driveway. “HAMBERGER” she stubbornly says to me.

“HAMBUUGRER” I attempt as a response.

“HAMBEERGEER” she attempts for a second time.

 “HAMBERGER” I respond happily while falling off of my tricycle. I stand up and start bawling from the shock, but not the pain because there was no pain falling about three inches from the ground. My hair is falling all over the place and Hanna starts to kiss me on the head and asks, “Is your head ok? Is your head ok honey?” Around the same time in our lives we became obsessed with looking the same, and dressing the same. If I wore a dress, she had to as well. If I wore pants, she had to also. A common phone conversation you would hear our parents having before a play date would go something like “…pink? Oh Sarah’s in green, you want to change Hanna or should I change Sarah? Pants? Oh no Sarah’s in a dress….ok pink dresses? Good I’ll see you in five minutes Bless bless.” Nearly all of my memories from my childhood have Hanna standing there right by my side. We were always together.

Flight 164 is now boarding. The excitement is starting to swell up in the pit of my stomach, or is that nerves? Last time I saw Hanna was two years ago, I wonder how different she is I wonder how she looks? “Let me get that.” A man takes my oversized carry on bag and somehow manages to shove it into the tiny compartment above my seat.

“Thanks” I awkwardly respond to his generosity. I sit down in the window seat. I have a love hate relationship with the window seat. I love looking at the view and being able to see the word in such an odd perspective: Cars the size of ants, people become invisible, insignificant just another creature on the earth. But I hate having to get up and go pee. I always have to go to the bathroom. I don’t know if it’s because my bladder is uncommonly little, or because I drink a massive quantity of liquids. It’s probably somewhere in the middle. Either way the only word to describe the awful obstacle course of climbing over the legs of perfect strangers every couple of hours is awkward. I grab the complimentary navy blue blanket and scratchy pillow, which I somehow find comforting and snuggle up against the window.

Hanna was sent to a public school in kindergarten and I was enrolled into The East Bay French American School also known as Ecole Bilangue. The only differences between us were our schools and the second languages we soon both became fluent in. I was always jealous of her abilities to speak Icelandic and she was always jealous of my French. “I promise to teach you Icelandic if you teach me French” she said to me lying in bed late at night.

“Ok, how do you count to ten?” I responded.

“Eight trlee thfree fourthe fim sex sciew oughta niew tieu,” Hanna would say way to quickly for me to repeat and with sounds that would take years for me to develop the ability to say.

 “How bout I teach you French first? Un deu trios quatre cinque six sept huite neuf dix” She was able to remember it all immediately. I never understood why she was so good at learning French when I had so many problems learning Icelandic. Either way neither of us were very good teachers because to this day I can utter about five phrases in her language and she can maybe count to ten in French. Although I could not speak Icelandic, I was around it enough to understand it perfectly. Other than our cultural differences, we were soon morphed together into one. Our own sisters even got us confused every once and a while.

The best part of flying is taking off. The thrill of moving so fast, and being able to depart from the ground to join the birds in the sky. Please fasten your seatbelts and we would like you to remember this is a no smoking flight. Duh! What flight nowadays is a smoking flight? The plane starts to vibrate; I look out the window, we have started to move Next thing I know were in the air and the “fasten your seatbelt” sign disappears. I can go to the bathroom. A feeling keeps entering my stomach whenever I think about my destination. Anxiety? Exhilaration? This happens every time I see her why worry so much? Because we change, she changes mostly. I feel the same, have I changes too? Each time I see her she has gone through something serious or just aged a couple years. Either way it becomes a challenge to have to reacquaint with each other again. It doesn’t make sense to not know your best friend. “Would you like something to drink honey?” a stewardess asks me with the fakest smile I’ve ever seen.

“A coke please?” I respond just as fake. I always regret ordering drinks the second I do it. All it does is makes me have to go to the bathroom and forces me to have my tray down all the while being super careful not to spill. I get so impatient that I just have to down it. Soda also makes me thirsty.

Elva, Hanna’s mom would occasionally surprise me after school and pick me up instead of my own mom. We would then go to Hanna’s school. “Can I go inside?” I always asked Elva.

 “Of course” she responded. It was like visiting another planet. Entering her school I would cautiously walk in through the gates and look around aware of the students staring at me. I would always regret my decision of going in to get her. Those stares scared me and they made me jealous. All of these people got to go to school with Hanna and I only got to walk through these gates every once and a while to pick her up with her mother by my side. “Sarah! This is Sophie I know you met her before right? Are you coming over today?” Hanna would greet me a little too loud and enthusiastically as any child would in the chaos of after school in the playground.

“Yeah! Lets go?” I would shyly respond, completely aware of Sophie looking at me as if I didn’t belong and wondering why I got to take Hanna away. “Bye!” we said in unison making me feel a little more comfortable in this foreign territory. I took for granted those rituals of sorts that we had. We would see each other so often that it got to a point where I couldn’t even begin to fathom a life without her. Unfortunately that is exactly what I had to do. Live my life without her.

The constant engine vibrations make me tired. I can always fall asleep in a moving vehicle and I always wake up as soon as the engine is turned off. I lean against the window with my pillow. Wait, I reach down into my backpack and pull out a light pink stuffed animal. The animal is a polar bear, but the color tends to throw people off. Most of the time it is mistaken for a pig, which really just hurts its feelings. I never travel without him. He has never been named, but I’ve had him as long as I’ve known Hanna. I use the polar bear as an extra pillow. As I lean against the window my eyes slowly begin to become heavier and droop down. My mind begins to wander into the dream world and I’m gone. What feels like moments later, but according to my watch is two hours later, I open my ears to the surrounding noise. I focus my hearing on the stewardess “Chicken or Fish?” Its dinnertime, I open my eyes to the artificial lighting in the plane and I feel my stomach growling. Perfect timing. “Chicken or Fish?” she looks at me with that smile.

“Chicken please” I figure that fish on an airplane is not a very brilliant idea. The stewardess hands me a steaming hot piece of cardboard covered in tin foil. She then hands me a sealed plastic bag containing a miniature salt and pepper packet, a moist towlette, a spoon, fork, and a knife. I rip it open with my teeth remove the utensils and slowly uncover the food attempting to avoid the wet steam seeping through. The food is not he best I’ve ever tasted but as airplane food goes it’s pretty yummy.

In second grade Hanna and I would begin to overhear scary conversations. “It’s such a good job opportunity, who would have thought they would want both of us so badly? And I think it would be good for the girls to be around their family. They don’t have any here and it’s costing a fortune to visit them every year.” Elva said on the phone while Hanna and I were in the other room listening intently.

“But I don’t want to move to Iceland”, she would say looking really worried.

“Why would you move? You aren’t going to move, don’t worry we wont let them move you!” I responded believing every word of what I said was true. Conversations like Elva’s started to become more and more common as the year progressed. I would block them out. The idea of losing Hanna was literally more then my imagination was willing to take me. Reality struck hard. I walked into the kitchen at the Thormars one day, and the whole family was hunched in front of the computer. “ Whatcha lookin at?” I asked not really that interested, saying more as a way to inform them I was in the kitchen. There was a small crack of visibility through all of the heads in front of the computer. Looking through it I saw a house on the screen. “Whose house is that?” I asked anyone who was willing to listen.

“Ours hopefully” Elva said avoiding eye contact with me. I looked away from the computer and took a step back. Was it just me or did Hanna seem a little excited? Did she want to move? Did she want to leave me behind? I didn’t understand how she could see any positive outcome in her moving away. Up until the day I had to say goodbye, I believed that there was a chance they would not decide to move. I think it is because our parents gave me false hope; they would never speak of the move as if it was for sure going to happen. They would talk about the move as a possibility of the future, just another option of many. I wouldn’t imagine being without my sister, my best friend, my life, me. She is and was a part of me that I lost on that terrible day I had to say goodbye.

A movie is about to start; I can tell that not many people are happy about it. I think its funny when they play movies in the middle of the night. So many people are trying to sleep, but get so distracted by the T.V right in front of their faces that they never get a moment of shuteye. I occasionally fall into that category. I rummage through the seat pocket, which I have transformed into a sort of garbage can until I find the free headphones the airline handed out while I was boarding the plane. I plug them in and start searching for the channel that connects to the screen, Jazz, classical, Disney, commercials. Found it. As the movie starts I notice the women next to me, who looks to be about 50 and a little overweight. She spills over onto my seat, but just a little bit. Anyways, she’s sleeping and leaning a little too close to me for comfort. Of course I pity her, stuck in the middle seat between two strangers, how does one sleep comfortably in that situation? As the movie goes on this woman is slowly inching her way towards me. By the end of the movie her head is pretty much resting on my shoulders. I decide it’s the perfect opportunity to go to the bathroom and have to “accidentally” wake her up.

Every single piece of the day Hanna left is carved into my memory, never going to disappear. I woke up that morning with a feeling of dread. I knew what day it was and I knew that it was time to face reality. There was no turning back, they bought a house, they had plane tickets, and they sent their furniture. But still, a piece of me would not give up on hope, hope that they would see how sad I was and decide it wasn’t worth it. Hanna and I had exchanged goodbyes already the day before. The plan was to say goodbye and just let it happen make it quick and painless, like pulling off a band-aid. But  loosing best friends is an injury much deeper then a band-aid could cure. I had a secret plan to see her one last time, I’m still not sure if that was a good idea or not but either way it was memorable. I was driven to her house and the whole family happened to be in the front yard. I’m pretty sure they were saying goodbye to the house and I decided to interrupt. “Don’t go! Please don’t go! What am I going to do? Don’t let her leave!” I didn’t know what else to do but beg one last time.

“Don’t worry! Sarah I’ll sees you in a year! I’m not going to have any fun at all, at least you get to stay here! I’m stuck in Iceland.” Tears started to swell in her eyes as she attempted to consol me.

“Just don’t go!” The scene was getting too depressing for our parents to witness so they dragged us away from each other. I went back into the car after giving her the most meaningful hug of my life. As we drove away I turned around in time to capture a last glance of Hanna in front of her house her whole family standing outside. The picture was becoming blurry because of the tears forming in my eyes. Driving away, I looked back trying to absorb everything in. Every smell, feeling, thought, trying to hold on to it, to her, forever but it slowly faded away. As the car kept driving she was gone and she took a part of me with her.

The excitement of seeing her is always mixed in with fear and frustration. How different will we be this time? We are always the same height and size wills that change? She has been going out with a boy whose’ name I cant even pronounce. Will I be number two in her life now? What are her other good friends like? We both have been put into compromising positions. Forced to find temporary replacements for each other. Another best friend, one that can actually experience life with me and who will always be around in flesh and bone to consul me in a crisis. The thing is, it turns out they don’t just come for a temporary stay. Your best friend is in it for the long haul. This keeps Hanna and me even further apart. There is still a level, which no one can surpass; no one can rise above her in my mind. They can come close but she is me. She is a piece of me, a piece that has been taken away and shipped to Iceland but no matter how far away she is there is nothing I keep from her. She bears the burdens of my deepest and sometimes darkest emotions and thoughts.

Please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for landing. I do as I’m told by the familiar fake voice of the stewardess. Butterflies start to flutter in my stomach, am I ready for this? Am I ready to see Hanna again? We haven’t seen each other in two years, and have so many fears about our reunion. “Garbage, Garbage please” a stewardess holds out a large garbage bag and eyes my seat pocket full of trash. I try to grab all of it at once only to drop pieces all over the place. I put as much as I can gather into the bag and she walks off. I look out the window and see nothing but darkness. The plane lands bumpily and starts to roll around aimlessly on the runway, waiting for a parking spot I suppose. We finally pull up into a gate and the crowd swarms into the aisle creating congested traffic jam. I manage to grab my bag from the overhead case all by myself and walk out into the Icelandic airport. I walk so quickly that I’m almost running. I head straight for baggage claim and impatiently sit fidgeting waiting for my luggage to show up. Finally! I grab it and run to the exit, I start to look around frantically full of excitement. Will I even recognize her? “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!” I turn around in time to see her jump on top of me and embrace me. I return the favor!

 “Oh My GOD! Hi!” is all I am able to say. I’m too busy taking everything in, the way she looks the way she smells, feels. She is the same. We hug again.