Home At Last

The decision to pack up and fly home this month was not made lightly. We moved overseas at the beginning of this year, days before all international flights were stopped, before schools shut, and before we entered the first of many lockdowns.

Restrictions eased towards the end of the summer, but the travel ban remained. We powered through, waiting for the schools to announce their reopening, waiting for some semblance of normality to resume. But the announcement we wanted never came.

The schools will remain shut, the newspapers said, ‘until a vaccine is found’. The flights will remain closed, the Irish Embassy said, ‘with the exception of one-way repatriation flights’. And so, after seven long months, and with a child going slowly mad indoors, the decision was made.

The next available flight; one-way to Dublin via Amsterdam, was two weeks away, so we booked it. In the 14 days that followed the flight was rescheduled twice, cancelled, reinstated, and then rescheduled again. I wore down my last remaining nerve the week of the flight, checking the status every five minutes. The day before the flight the airport website informed me that the flight was cancelled. The airline, however, said it was right on time. You couldn’t make it up.

In the midst of the madness, I never once for a moment stopped to think about the actual journey we were about to undertake. Multiple flights in the middle of a pandemic, lengthy wait times between flights, and long drives either side. As soon as we arrived at the airport, however, I could think of nothing else.

The tension at check-in hit me like a high wave. The anxiety was palpable. Hundreds and hundreds of people, exhausted, fretful, overloaded with bags, some silent, some in tears. Conversations about visas, and passports, and not coming back. Stressed check-in staff, some wearing masks, some not, handing out pens to fill in forms that had been touched by every single person in the queue before them. I started to feel uneasy.

We sat at the departure gate for three hours. It was empty, initially, and I thought OK; this is fine. My friend May had messaged me a few days before the flight and said: “Don’t worry it’s actually safer to fly now than when they open up domestic flights, as the seats are so limited. There will be very few people on the plane.”

I thought about this as I watched more and more people pile into the waiting area, as I watched every seat being filled, as I watched people sit on the metal table between chairs, and line up at the gate, with no space between them, as there was nothing left to sit on.

I thought about this as we boarded the flight, with hundreds of other people, people who seemed more concerned with overhead luggage space, and someone else sitting in their seat than they were about distancing.

I thought about this as we took our seats, as we sat down, with nowhere to go, ready to undertake a six-and-a-half-hour flight, on a too-full plane, in the middle of a global pandemic. “Keep your mask on,” I said to my son. I nearly laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.

We landed in Amsterdam, and the plane aisle was full before the seatbelt sign was switched off. No departure by row, no procedure for disembarking in a socially distanced manner, no procedure at all. Rage started to bubble in my chest. Deep breaths, I thought.

We followed the transfers sign in the airport, standing as far away from other people as we possibly could, and made our way to security. A mother in front of me was doing her level best to coerce her toddler son into standing on the giant yellow bubbles on the floor, set two meters apart. “It’s just like a game’, she said. “Now we walk to the next bubble, See?”

He clapped for himself as he reached the next bubble. I smiled at her, and she smiled back, and then she looked at something behind me, her face changing.

I turned around to find a man and his family standing so close to us you’d be forgiven for thinking we were all in the same group. I stepped away quickly and observed the huge space behind them. He looked at me, disinterested. They were not into distancing it seems, they were in a hurry, and I was in their way.

At this point, I felt like blowing a gasket, as my mother would say. I was exceptionally tired, and annoyed, and very anxious, just like everyone else. With eleven hours of travelling done, and another ten to go, this was just not going the way I had anticipated, and briefly, I contemplated having a meltdown in the middle of Schiphol Airport.

I figured losing it in front of my eight-year-old child would not do anyone any good, however, myself included, and so instead I took a deep breath, and steeled myself, and looked at the man with his family, and I pointed at the yellow bubble on the floor. “Excuse me,” I said. “Two meters.” He looked at me; shocked, and then embarrassed and angry, and shuffled backwards.

OK, I said to my son. Onwards. We can do this.

We made our way to the last departure gate of the day, and I watched again in absolute dismay as all the seats filled up in the waiting area, and people started to queue, hundreds and hundreds of people, because there was nowhere left to sit. I could see a shuttle bus outside, and I knew, before we even stood up, that they were going to make everyone squeeze onto that bus, like sardines in a tin, to get to the plane.

I picked up my bag and jacket, and as I helped my son into his coat, I noticed a young woman standing a few feet from me, her boarding pass clasped tightly in her hand, her phone pressed to her ear. She looked exhausted, and she was crying. ‘Nearly there’ I heard her say, through tears. ‘Can’t wait to see you’. And then she took a deep breath, and slung her bag over her shoulder, and made her way to the gate.

I stood for a moment and watched her walk away. And I thought about what she must have gone through to get this point. I thought about what everyone at this gate must have gone through to get to this point.

The flights, the tiredness, the anxiety, the temperature checks, the overuse of hand sanitizer and anti-bacterial wipes, the panic about two meters, the stress about passenger locator forms - and we were all doing it for one reason. For people.

Everyone was on their way to wherever they were going, in the middle of this chaos, so that they could be with their people again.

I sat back down, and I picked up my phone and wrote a message to my mum. Nearly there, I said. Can’t wait to see you. And then I started to cry.

Simone Gannon, September 2020

Have you travelled home during the pandemic?
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