Sky Bound

The Swiss Alps

It's a bit ironic how when lifted from ground, far removed from the world, I feel more connected to the world. While above the clouds...in an airplane traveling faster than all things below me.

I remember one of my professors once said--while discussing Google Maps and its control over how we stratify the world--she remembers being a girl...and being on an airplane, seeing houses morph into little monopoly pieces, cars into ants...then specks. She told us she remembers feeling as though she had been seeing the world through the vision of God. Seeing everything from above the things themselves.

There's a sense of power and surveillance that dissipates when your on the ground.

And while there is a sense of physical vulnerability in the air--maybe we will fall, maybe we will crash--there is a sense of comfort...maybe moral safety. Whatever turmoil or suffering is happening below...I am outside of that when air bound. Boundaries don't exist in the sky as they do on the ground. The skyway is a shared space. Boundaries blur. Any differences below are masked by their tiny size...and clouds. And the lines we see on maps of course don't exist when you're above, looking down at Earth.

You feel both at once the anxiety and relief that come from leaving one place...and approaching another.

Time is different in the air. Earthbound, it takes ten hours to get to Michigan from New Jersey. When I'm on a plane, it takes one. Yet when I'm in my car on the highway, on the ground, I feel like I'm going racing speeds. In the sky, you barely feel motion at all. Clouds roll by like molasses then suddenly in an hour's time you're on new ground.

My grandma died. In Cameroon. I asked if I could go to the funeral. And so I went.

First, home -- to New Jersey -- then to Europe. Then to Cameroon.

It's been over six years since I'd been to Cameroon. So it was time. And this was my opportunity. I wish there had been an earlier opportunity. Before Mami was dead.

We have never spoken the same language. So we've never really spoken. But I know her through gestures, touch, and stories. As well as assumptions. And DNA--I think being a grandchild makes me 1/8th of her...

I was named after her.

A few weeks before Mami died, and before we planned this trip, my uncle called -- Blaise, my dad's youngest brother, and actually his largest brother. I saw the unfamiliar first three digits and thought it was an unsolicited ad. I let it ring. But then the number called back twice so I answered. He said "Mami est fatigue." Grandma is tired. I knew what he meant.

Suddenly death is everywhere. Gripping onto everybody. And I think about it more often.

I still haven't fully understood that my mom has cancer. It doesn't feel like that was supposed to happen. But I'm sure it never does. I haven't fully understood it yet in part because I don't see her often. So I don't see this cancer. I only mostly hear about it. Through emails, texts, and invitations to my aunt's house...to sew hats for when she loses her hair. If she does. Don't they always?

No one is invincible. No matter how invincible they seem. A tiny genetic code, or protein code -- or whatever it is, that begins as one disobedient cell -- can bring anyone down. Thinking about all this isn't so difficult. But seeing it isn't as easy.

Both my parents moved far, far away from their moms...and dads. My mom's mom lived across the country in California and died there. And I think my mom always felt uneasy about that. She sends flowers for her grave a few times a year. My dad moved oceans from his mom and dad. His dad died a long time ago. And now his mom is dead. Just several months before we planned on visiting. I know he wished he visited more often.

I can't say why people estrange themselves from their families. I can't say why I do it either. Either way, I'm glad I went to Cameroon to visit mine. Seldom is better than never -- and so is late.