Transportation

The other day I told a friend that during non-COVID times I used to hop on a plane to see my daughter and her family in Florida a few times each winter. Only when I stopped to think about it did I realize the significance of that casual remark.

I remember my first overnight flight across the country when I was a child. I was in awe of the girls who changed into their pajamas and put cold cream on their faces and curlers in their hair. The flight stopped twice on the way to California. Now, jets make the flight shorter, but do not erase the differences in how we live.    

Weather is a big part of it. I have often called my daughter on a cold, dreary day in the northeast, expecting to find her shut in as I was, only to learn she was at the pool.  In Florida now for an extended stay, I still get my NY Times Cooking emails. They provide recipes for hot soups and stews, while I’m thinking salads with fresh fruit. I don’t have to allow extra time here  to put on a coat, scarf, hat, gloves and boots. The rhythms and tasks of daily living are different.

These differences are even more marked internationally. My trip to Russia was a shorter flight than my first trip to California, but landed me in a profoundly different culture, with signs in an alphabet I could not decipher, and a history shaped by tyranny and war.  

In St. Petersburg, even young people talked about how their families had suffered during the siege of WWII. The young people I met at a Passover Seder in Moscow talked about how their great-grandparents, who had fled Russia to escape the Tsar, returned to Russia after the revolution. They believed communism promised a better world but ended up trapped by Stalin and a new era of antisemitism.   

The Russian people were friendly, but lines to board a train or enter a museum appeared to be only guidance; waiting politely was not the norm.  I learned never to decline a cup of tea offered by my hosts or put my purse on the floor in a restaurant.  

California, Florida, or Russia. I have been transported, literally, to other worlds, some I wished I could stay in and some that made me yearn for home.