I am sure I’ve forgotten something.
Perched on a high stool at Cafe Nero, soaking in the puffer jackets, burnt coffee and vitamin D deficient faces of Heathrow airport, I feel the engines of panic start to rev in my chest every few minutes when I remember where I am: in a foreign country (kind of), in a public space (somewhere I rarely find myself in Mumbai), surrounded by bags of belongings I very much don’t want to be relieved of and, most vividly, alone. I am on a solo trip to the UK for an as-yet undefined period of time in order to acquire a work permit for India. Jasper and Dylan are still happily in Mumbai, leaving me to navigate this excursion all by myself.
Ah, that’s what I’ve forgotten: my people.
The last time Dylan and I agreed to travel independently of one another in an effort to divide and conquer Indian immigration, we ended up involuntarily separated for 6 months. That time, I got to keep the baby with me and he was the source of all my joy and strength. This time, there will be the same distance between us, with Dylan in India and me in Jersey, but this time I don’t have my emotional support baby.
I have been suppressing the rising sense of dread all week but, as I set off for the airport in the middle of the Mumbai night, it crept up on me. I should only be here for a couple of weeks (I hope), and my visa should be issued without challenge (they say), but still, whether because I am a mother and therefore hard-wired to prepare for the worst, or because of the residual distrust still deeply embedded in me from last time, I realise I have been a long way from looking forward to this trip.
I was actually meant to leave last Thursday but I delayed my departure for a couple of very legitimate reasons. Firstly, I was playing in a cricket tournament and didn’t want to abandon my team halfway through. We went in as underdogs for our last match and came out glorious victors, so that was well justified. Secondly, Jasper was sick and, while I didn’t do any better at getting medicine into him than I ever do, I did steal enough feverish, sleepy cuddles to tide me over while I’m gone. Again, a worthy delay.
What I hadn’t admitted to myself until I stepped out of our front door, was that they were just serendipitous excuses: the truth was that I wasn’t ready to leave and wanted to hang around as long as possible—like the proverbial bad smell. Coincidentally, Jasper spent most of the last 48 hours we had together telling me that I smelled as a way to make me leave him in peace, so perhaps I played my role too well.
Now that I have left, I am surprised that I don’t feel as I expected to feel about leaving. I thought I would be weighed down by the guilt of shirking my motherhood duties in pursuit of professional fulfilment (a work visa); perpetually anxious about something going wrong while I am far away; desperate and achy for the proximity I usually have to both Jasper and Dylan. I feel none of these things. I miss them, yes. But the way I miss them is not what I was expecting. I think of myself as the glue which holds our little family together and ensures we all march forwards towards well-planned, well-dressed and well-nourished futures. I thought that without me, things would start to crack and crumble, and fast. But in the short time I have been out in the world alone (less than two days), I have come to see that in reality, it is they who hold me together: they are my keepers. It isn’t their lives which are disrupted by my absence, it’s mine. I miss the comfort of knowing they are there, but I don’t feel guilty or anxious about having left. I am not worried for them, I am worried for me and my ability to function alone.
At the airport, on the flight and on arrival in London, I feel discombobulated and lost, and am sporadically paralysed by a fear that I have forgotten something important. Dylan is usually in charge of all the travel documents—he knows where the passports and the boarding passes and the baggage receipts are at all times. He is also usually the money, saving me the trouble of understanding payment systems or remembering where I have put my bank cards. Jasper usually keeps me busy, continually demanding toys or snacks, threatening to make a scene or refusing to go to the loo. I spend more time planning for travel with Jasper than we spend actually travelling and my bag is stuffed with solutions for every problem he can conjure. Without Jasper and my Jasper-related duties, I not only feel oddly naked and poorly prepared, I also feel as though my brain keeps going to sleep. As though by switching off its usual decision-making overdrive, I have somehow given it permission to stop thinking entirely. I find my sensible thoughts melting into daydreams and when I snap back to where I am, such as in a coffee shop in Heathrow, I am immediately engulfed by the sense that I have forgotten or lost something while my mind was elsewhere.
Each time this happens, I do a quick scan of all my belongings, and then focus back on the task at hand: applying for the visa. A glance at the behavioural rules and regulations on the visa centre website informs me that no bags are allowed in the centre: not handbags, not purses, not backpacks. Trying to ignore an angry flash of ‘why am I putting myself through this?’ I accept that I will have to check my big suitcase, my wheelie suitcase and my backpack into the airport left luggage shop for the day, and set off with little more than the document wallet, my phone and various bank cards distributed about my person, in case something happens to any one of my pockets—looking like I’m off to do some market research. If I felt naked without my toddler, I feel downright exposed now that I have shed all my physical baggage too. As I exit the terminal, the cold air instantly permeates my feeble attempt at winter clothing and I regret leaving my gloves in one of the bags.
No sooner have I climbed into the first taxi of what will be a three-taxi day (travelling barely 30 miles and costing me just shy of £100), than I am seized by a fit of frenzied panic, wildly patting all my pockets (of which there are many, now that I am unfamiliarly clad in a jacket as well as jeans), and even calling out a hasty ‘stop! I’ve forgotten something’ to the cab driver. My passport. Where is my passport?! Why isn’t it in the folder with all the other documents? I pat some more and am visibly and audibly relieved (before feeling instantly stupid) when I locate it tucked away in an inside jacket pocket. I vaguely remember my thought process around it being crucial to visa application success and therefore worthy of being hidden (a thought process I clearly didn’t complete), and quickly reverse this and decide that its importance merits it being visible. I release the taxi driver from his concern and confusion, and allow him to set off towards the VFS office in Hounslow, chastise my own brain for being so unreliable and sit back to enjoy the morning sunlight and warmth of the car’s heating, safe in the knowledge that this is an enclosed environment in which I can allow my mind to wander.
I won’t go into details about the VFS experience, but suffice to say that my record of getting everything right the first time at a VFS office is still ringing in at zero from many. It also turns out that the no-bag rule is not so much a rule as a suggestion which almost nobody in the centre heeds. More fool me. However, all hurdles are jumped and all additional payments covered, meaning that the visa application has been made. From Hounslow I take another taxi to St Margaret’s where I pick up a bus route (with a friend to guide me, I am clearly in no responsible state to be taking buses) to Richmond. A leisurely lunch in Richmond feeds me a steak sandwich and a much-needed second coffee, enjoyed beside a roaring fire and too soon it is time for me to head back to Heathrow to retrieve all my belongings and check into my flight to Jersey.
The rest of my journey is smooth, once I have double and triple checked that I haven’t left anything vital at the security check. As with documents, Dylan usually handles the bags and checks at security, while I am on Jasper-wrangling duties (or he is on mummy-entertaining duties, depending on how you look at it). Standing alone at the point where the bags are spat out of the machine I find myself people-watching to the point of paying no attention and, again, am snapped back to reality by the fear that I have missed or lost something while I was awkwardly staring at the twenty-something year old man in the bowler hat and braces. (In my defence, lots of people were staring at him.)
Despite my wandering mind’s best efforts, I arrive safely in Jersey and, as I settle in for a much-needed horizontal night’s sleep, I think back over the journey here. There are definitely pros and cons to solo travel, and the emotions to match.
I enjoyed the chance to listen to a podcast on the way to the airport, instead of yet more PAW Patrol. I missed the special admission to priority security that Jasper’s blue eyes and blond hair usually earn us in Mumbai. I missed the priority boarding afforded to those travelling with kids. I smiled to myself at the sign saying ‘no pickles’ (a nickname we give Jasper when he is at his most mischievous) over the security counters. I felt sad when I spotted the Lego shop and realised I didn’t need to take a detour to avoid it. I felt relieved that I was alone when I was incorrectly informed by British Airways that my London to Jersey flight had been cancelled. I very much enjoyed being able to go to the toilet in the plane alone—without Jasper and his eagerness to touch every wee-splattered surface with every part of his body. My heart ached and I missed Dylan and Jasper hugely when I saw other families travelling together. I sympathised with the parents of the baby who screamed the entire way from Mumbai to London and was grateful Jasper has never unlocked that register in his vocal range. I loved being able to read uninterrupted. I relished being able to (attempt) sleep without Jasper’s ever-kicking feet slamming into my side. I realised how much easier it is to remove baggage from a carousel without a toddler under foot. And I was glad that I only had to put my weary self to bed, without bathing and reading to a small person.
I am probably here for a couple of weeks, and many people (veteran mothers, mostly) have advised me to enjoy it—this rare feeling of being the master of my own time, the chance to do the things I like to do (writing, running, a slow supermarket shop), sleeping with both ears closed—because I may never get this guilt-free opportunity to focus on myself again. For two weeks, I can be young, wild and free! Except, I am not young - my excitement about some decent sleep and the aforementioned supermarket shops indicates that, even if you don’t know that I also have a slight crick in my neck from trying to sleep on the plane over. I’m not wild, either. The journey here taught me that I thrive in captivity and miss my captors too much. And, my goodness, am I far from free. Even modest consumption habits are expensive to upkeep in this country. I paid £2.90 for a can of water. Almost three pounds, for one can … of water! Granted, it was cucumber and mint flavoured, but it was still water!
Between my water and the taxis, perhaps there is one more thing I have forgotten, and that’s just how much things cost in the real world.
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