d i s c o n n e c t e d

i.

        “Hurry up in there!”

 

        The impatient voice outside made Maisie flinch and her brush clattered noisily onto the floor. She could almost hear her mum’s sharp voice scolding her for being so clumsy. She yelled a frantic apology (to the voice, not her mum-infused thinking) and scrambled over the gelid linoleum floor while trying to collect her things. She took one last quick glance in the mirror in the hope that she looked presentable and hastily fleeted the bathroom.

 

        When she finally stepped out from under the buzzing bathroom light, she was greeted with the irked glare of a middle aged woman to whom Maisie mumbled another apology before slipping out behind her. She ran her fingers through her crow’s nest of auburn hair in an attempt to straighten it out better before she breathed and  took  in her surroundings.

 

        Around her, people scurried about lumbering about with anything from children, suitcases or trays of food. The giant loudspeaker overhead blared with announcements, and a huge billboard glowed with numbers and words. Flight #174 is departing in 2 minutes. Please  report to the boarding deck if you have a ticket for Flight #174  heading to England.  Maisie felt around the pockets of her jeans looking for her own flight number as her fingers fumbled through the Snickers wrappers and fortune cookie slips still there from who-knows-when.

 

        The crumpled plane ticket sat on her palm melancholy, looking more like a forgotten gum wrapper than the ticket that had turned her world upside down when it had came in the mail only a few weeks ago. Maisie could almost smell the Christmas gingersnaps that had been ticking their last few minutes in the oven that day, and feel the glops of Play-Dough that were stubbornly still in her hair after a tiresome morning of tending to the pre-Christmas Eve hyper daycare kids. Later, when she laid on her bed with her ‘Pride & Prejudice’ book laid out on her stomach, she could almost imagine that the moment had been a scene from some old Broadway chick-lit that she and her dad would watch when Maisie was little.  

        “10 Reasons Why Your Mum Who’s 1 Million-Something Miles Away Shouldn’t Ruin Your Christmas With A Wedding Invitation - Featuring the MumYou Only Get To See Once A Year and the Trippy Dad Who Won’t Sink Or Float”  A definite blockbuster.

 

        Yet here she was, the evidence of the inevitable sitting in all it’s adversity in her palm, taking the form of a plane ticket leaving for England in…”Flight #174 is departing. Thank you for flying with us, we hope to fly with you again soon.”  

        Maybe one day, she thought, I’ll look back on this and say to my grandkids ‘That’s why your pop should never force you into heels when you're racing after a plane while it departs.’