Baggage

[I’m home from the holidays and slowly getting caught up on e-mails, comments, and what-not…sorry for the delay folks. Internet access is inconsistent at best when I’m at home for a variety of reasons despite the relatively good internet my father has, but I digress…this post is the first of many catch up posts…]

Set and I have a thing about baggage. I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating: He loses my bags. Seriously. No one could possibly be as unlucky as I am in this without some sort of divine intervention. And no, the irony of this being about baggage has not escaped me.

Ever since I have noticed this trend I have taken to several precautions when traveling. Such as driving. (Look I know why He does this, but that doesn’t make me happy about it.) Thus, He has at times resorted to other forms of chaos on my return trips home. This has included: all of the bulbs in my apartment magically burning out at the same time, a smoke detector on a 12 foot cathedral ceiling with a newish battery nevertheless starting to beep at 1am (it is worth noting that buying a step ladder at Wal-mart at 2 in the morning will get you odd looks, and it is also worth noting that I am afraid of heights), my air mattress popping in the middle of the night before my return trip, my heater not working for a few hours on the coldest night of the year, etc…

He does these things because transitioning between a place where I am surrounded by loving family to a place where I am completely alone is rough and this is His way of reminding me that I’m never really alone and distracting me so I don’t dwell too long on the pain of switching gears between company and solitude. It’s a chaos god’s version of a reassuring pat on the head. And it is comforting despite its inherent discomfort.

 I more or less got a free pass on the way home this time around because 1) the return trip was not as depressing as it normally is and 2) He chose to save His shenanigans for the trip out.

I really thought I was safe because this was a direct flight. The fact that they managed to lose my bags on a direct flight that was one of only two flights leaving my hometown that day is downright impressive. But while I never got off the plane, the flight was not technically direct: we stopped in another small place called Watertown on the way to Minneapolis so a bunch people could get off and we could pick up another two or so. I was the only person from my hometown who stayed on the plane, but they didn’t notice me stay on the plane, so they took all the bags from the prior stop off.

There are normally checks and balances to prevent this sort of thing, but they were rushing and skipping steps. The Co-pilot had just gotten word that he needed to be on a plane that would be taking off from Minneapolis 10 minutes before we were scheduled to land and the tower in Minneapolis relayed that the only open runway slot was a full 30 minutes before we were supposed to be there. They decided they could make it.

We spent a record 7 minutes on the ground in Watertown before departing again and pitched straight up into the air (which I was surprised was possible in a puddle jumper) and straight back down again (which was even more surprising—there was a point where only ground was visible through the front windows of the plane). I was not aware that the normally hour and a half long flight could be done in 45 minutes. As soon as we were on the ground the pilot sheepishly turned to me and asked if I had a checked bag.

That is never a good sign.

I recognized Set’s hand in it immediately. There were just too many coincidences and too many people assuring me that this never happens. It took all of my restraint to keep from laughing and saying “I see you don’t have much experience with chaos gods”. Standing uselessly next to baggage claim waiting for my dad to come pick me up from the airport I tried in vain to figure out why Set would mess with my bags on the trip to my holiday destination. Was he just asserting himself as my parent? My RPD had been the day before…

Then I heard something over the noise of the crowd and the blaring Christmas music. The notes of a song. Played on a piano—a real one. See, in the Minneapolis they have a baby grand bolted to the floor in the baggage claim with a sign inviting random people to play. A young girl was sitting at the piano hesitantly tapping out the notes to Castle on a Cloud. There was something almost ethereal about the scene. Then she suddenly switched to Master of the House just as my father walked through the door, which I found amusing. It wasn’t until much later that night—after much stewing over not having things like pajamas and the charge cord for my laptop—that I realized the significance of the girl at the piano and the reason for Set’s meddling.

I was lying awake in bed when I suddenly remembered that I had been worried about going back to the condo—the place of my mother’s death. I had been afraid that returning there for the first time since July would be difficult. I had this internal script of how awful and distressing it would be and how the condo clearly would have some lingering feel of death like it had when she was dying.

But I had been too distracted by coping with my lost bag—a trip to target to get essentials, telling the story to my father and then my brother—to spare any thought to where I was. The crucial moment of crossing that threshold had been completely obscured by my annoyance at losing my things and my wracking my brain to figure out why He had been so keen on shaking up my world at the start of my trip instead of at the end. I opened all ears and eyes in the unseen, but there was nothing to see or hear. Not that I needed to do that. It was fairly clear I had been wrong. If materialism could wash over the feeling of death—well, it couldn’t. So then the feeling probably never existed to begin with.

Then I remembered the song.

Castle on a Cloud. Of course it would be that. My ancestor reading was titled The Cloud and dealt with warnings of deception, particularly self deception. This is important to note because clouds are a thing for us now. A signal that I am engaging in deception or being deceived—like the self-deception of imagining I should have some sort of nervous breakdown just because I’m entering into the place where my mother died. That I was creating a narrative that didn’t need to be. Baggage I didn't need to have. A narrative that Set replaced with one of His own. A bag he helped me permanently lose. A blessing in disguise. Which is what I’ve come to expect from Him at any rate. 

It was a bit surprising that my ancestors had a hand in it as well this time. Though maybe not too surprising: my mother always loved Le Mis.