On Traveling

By Lisa Kogan

 

My fear of flying kicks in the second I buckle up and feel that fierce acceleration pin me to the back of my seat. I then take a deep breath of stale air, and spend the rest of the trip in an endless hell of near collisions and nausea-inducing bumpiness…until the cabdriver finally drops us off at the airport.

Every flight I board has a crying baby. Me. Johannes claims that the key to being my seat partner is understanding from the get-go that it's a very bad idea to try to strike up a conversation. Frankly, if I were you, I wouldn't even try making direct eye contact, because I'll be extremely busy having a massive panic attack and will pause just long enough to shoot you a look so chilly you could store fur in it. There simply isn't enough Xanax in the world to lull me into believing that 280 human beings attempting to choose between lousy lasagna and chewy chicken while watching a rerun of How I Met Your Mother at 33,000 feet in the sky qualifies as sane behavior.

But the holidays are upon us, and unfortunately over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go is only doable if your grandmother happens to be conveniently located over the river and through the woods. Julia's grandma lives in a small German village, a place where everything—fruit, vegetables, fish, gingerbread, marzipan, strudel, small children, churches from the 14th century, cobblestone streets, Volkswagens, you name it—is drenched in some sort of cream sauce and it is virtually impossible to get even a single ice cube for the Diet Coke you are drinking in a futile effort to mitigate the effects of all that heavy cream.