Learning on a Jet Plane by Margaret

Learning on a Jet Plane by Margaret - October 2013 Scholarship Essay

I found myself in the window seat, gazing out at the moon shinning off the snow-white cloud which lay between me and the Atlantic, an unwatched movie playing on the seatback in front of me. It was four a.m., by my Arizona-set watch at least, and I hadn’t slept in more than fifty hours. I’d never traveled so far before, in my memory, and certainly not alone. I would do many things I’d never done before on this voyage, some would be considerably less positive experiences than others.
My whole life I’d told myself I couldn’t do things, accomplish things. This, that or the other was always out of my reach, always too difficult, too demanding to be accomplished by the likes of me, so I generally wouldn’t even make the attempt. Now, here I was, freshly minted passport in hand, luggage stowed below, and me alone on a plane headed for Scotland. I’d dreamt of seeing Scotland my whole life, pined for the Highlands and the lochs of my ancestors and here I was, doing it, me, and it only took the impending death of my mother from lung cancer to get me there.
My mother never did anything adventurous or risky; she never traveled, drove, held a job, or even voted unless someone or something external forced her hand. She went to Germany because her first husband, my father, was in the Army. She lived in Scotland because her second husband was a Scotsman. She married her second husband because her first marriage ended and she wouldn’t even try to take care of herself. I was exactly like her, though I couldn’t acknowledge as much at the time.
The only reason I stopped living with my father back in 2003 was because he died and I promptly moved to Arizona to be near my brother’s family. I would spend the next two months of my life watching my mother slip away, caring for her through her rapid deterioration, while simultaneously clearing out her hoarder’s apartment. I would cook and clean, I would fed her by hand when she no longer could fed herself, empty her catheter bag and administer her medications when she pained. I would sleep in the sitting room, on the couch where the hospital had assembled her bed, to be certain I would hear her should she have need of me. I would be too busy to think about what I couldn’t do, what was too hard to accomplish, and would simply do what the moment necessitated. During those approaching days and nights I would learn the most valuable lessen of my life; to live now, in the now, because life ends sooner rather than later and living in fear is a choice.
I took the lessen so deeply to heart that after my mother’s funeral and my brother’s departure for Arizona, I climbed on a train and went north to Glasgow where I toured the Highlands, saw Loch Lomond and rode a ferry on Loch Ness, took pictures of Ben Nevis, the highest bidion in the country, and twice stood on the soil of Glencoe where my MacDonald ancestors were betrayed and slaughtered as they slept. I spent a weekend there before heading south to London on another train, loving the form of travel the whole way, where I spent an entire day at the Museum of Natural History and toured Stone Hinge and Bath before returning home.
Back in my Motherland, I tried readjusting to life as it had been, but could no longer stand not doing what I’d been too afraid to even try before my journey of self-discovery. I quit the job I’d grown weary of and enrolled in school to create a new life for myself. Sitting, gazing out that plane window a few months ago, I could never have anticipated I’d be where I am now, and now I can’t anticipate where I’ll be in a year, or even six months, save that I’ll be doing what I want, not what I’m not afraid to do.