The slightly psycho-rigid on flight staff on the Royal Thai flight from Paris to Bangkok were just fine, really. The real challenge is travelling with a nineteen-month old.
Running up the aisles, down the aisles, up the aisles and – wait, this should be fun! – down the aisles as you are flying over Europe and Asia would be anyone’s idea of a good time and this Sayo understood perfectly.
Coming home; and
the taxi ride with the excitement of seeing our Vientiane again. Our streets,
our traffic, our shops and secret corners. Home.
But all of this happens in a fog, as though the body were disconnected from the spirit and all one’s being has been soaked in a sponge.
Sleep comes blessedly. On again. Off again. Midnight awakenings. Three o’clock in the morning. The house sleeps yet murmurs. We are vibrating together. A slow easy mumble.
I spend the first 48 hours at home, marvelling at everything. The Internet works, there’s water in the cistern, the toilets flush. I can take a shower. Light plays off the floor, art hangs on the walls.
And then on morning three the sun rises after a tropical rain has washed the garden clean. Leaves as big as television screens shine like mirrors; the morning sun whisking off the moisture with a whisper.
On that morning three, the first miracle happens in this fresh world as mind and body find each other again and you step out of bed into a new dawn, back home, and walk downstairs to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee. Hot coffee, add cold milk and the hazel brownness warms hands and soul on the veranda.
Look! The garden!
