Return Flight

Learkana Chong

My mother and I sat next to each other on our flight home. Ee Luck somehow ended up getting a seat across the aisle from us, which left my mother no one else to converse with. Luckily, things were back to normal between us after our huge fight last night. There was never a heart-to-heart conversation where we discussed what we did wrong and apologized. We simply fell back into place, as if nothing toxic had ever transpired.

I used to desperately want that heart-to-heart. The kind I would see in an episode of Full House when I was a kid, a wonderful universe in which Danny Tanner, the loving and supportive parent, goes into his daughter’s room after a disagreement, says a few genuine and compassionate words, and hugs it out with her.  But I’ve come to accept that my relationship with my mother doesn’t work that way.

To my surprise, my mother was in a lighthearted mood on the flight. She confessed to me that she didn’t know how to lock the airplane bathroom door, which had resulted in someone attempting to open the door on her while she was peeing. We both giggled, and laughed even harder as we started segueing into toilet humor jokes.

I was equal parts relieved and anxious about returning to the States. The truth was that I had been feeling existentially out of sorts in America for a while now. This feeling had worsened during my stay in Cambodia. I was overwhelmed with not knowing my place, of not belonging. I had wondered if anywhere could really feel like home for me.

For now, it seemed, home was in the clouds, above the earth, flying with my mother’s arm leaning into mine on the armrest as she nodded off. For now, home was this fluctuating in between space, with thousands of miles between my mother and the country from which she once fled, between me and the country I would always be a stranger to, between my mother and the country where she sought refuge and found only alienation, between me and the country that continues to shun me in spite of my birthright. For now, home was her heart beating next to mine, in a body that had carried and sustained me into life, the freshly pressed memory of our shared laughter still lingering in the air between us.