I don’t think the Atlantic knows that she and I are in a fight.

We fly to Amman tonight, and our two giant pink suitcases are nearly packed. By that I mean they are sitting in the middle of the living room floor surrounded by a huge mess of clothes, shoes, and gifts – chocolate bars, sticker books, and tins of mackerel. Raja and I are heading to Amman for two weeks to visit his family.

I hate flying across the Atlantic, which is something I do regularly because my husband and I are from Jordan and America, respectively, and our families span two continents.

(Yes, I do recognize the immense privilege of being able to travel back and forth between my and Raja’s home countries and in having enough money to even book an overseas trip. Yes, I do recognize I’m complaining about something some people might love to do but can’t!)

I have some friends that are nervous fliers. They’ve done extensive Googling on how planes fly, and spend their time at the gate worrying about air pressure and propeller engines.

Lucky for me, I’m not that type of nervous flier.

I hate flying across the Atlantic because it reminds me how vast the Atlantic is and how far Raja and I are from some part of our family, wherever we are. That part makes me deeply sad.

I always know, rationally, that we live far from the Amman branch of our family. I miss my husband’s family in Amman, including our two adorable nephews – ages one and three and a half, babbling away in English and Arabic and German, looking bigger in every photo we see of them. I understand in that rational part of my brain that we live here, they live there, we visit each other as often as we can and blah, blah, blah.

But it’s not the same as knowing just how far apart we are in a visceral, physical way, like I do when I’m stuck in a metal tube racing along at 500 mph at an altitude of 36,000 feet over the cold, dark surface of the ocean. Sometimes, while trying to lull myself to sleep in hour 5 of the 12-hour flight I’ve done so many times, my eyes snap open suddenly, and I turn to Raja and clutch his arm in a panic.

“We are still flying.”
“I know.”
“At 500 miles per hour.”
“I know.”
“And we have been going for five hours so that is like… 2,500 miles.”
“Yes honey, I know.”
“The ocean, it’s…so big.”

This is my conclusion every single time. The ocean is so big. Brilliantly insightful, I know.

I imagine, out there somewhere, are married couples who come from two different continents who love to travel and find their lives to be a grand adventure. Sometimes I feel like one of those people. I can see my life through that lens: I’m going to Amman to visit my family! Who knew, growing up all those years in Wisconsin, I would end up having family in Amman after marrying a man who’s from there?

But other times, I don’t feel like one of those people at all.

One of the central puzzles of my life is that my husband and I have two different passports and our lives will always involve flying across the Atlantic and I really feel like settling down in a Midwestern suburb, buying a house, having children and a small vegetable garden, making homemade pesto every weekend, and never getting on a plane again.

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More on this topic soon. For now, must head to the airport. Like I said, this is a one-sided battle. The Atlantic seems indifferent to the whole situation, and the plane certainly won’t wait!