~~~
Day’s Verse:
He had healed many,
with the result that all those who had afflictions pressed around Him in order to touch Him.
Mark 3:10
~~~

I can’t very well write about the roil of emotions swirling around my return to Worcester. Emotions and aches always accompany these transitions, particularly one as momentous as this one; the last school summer of my life, a golden summer of joy with my family, has closed all too soon. I will focus instead on the facts of the event: that at midnight, Seattle time, on Saturday night Ian and I boarded a flight to Chicago. Twenty minutes later it lifted off, but I had already fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion: the flight attendant had to poke me to wake me up to put the tray table up for the takeoff.

I slept restlessly (is there any other way to sleep on an airplane?) shifting position often, until I woke up at 2:20 feeling queasier than I ever had before on a plane. I started sweating and soon tears dripped down my face from the exertion of keeping silent and still. Twenty minutes later I threw up both the coconut custard and chocolate pudding my families plied us with before our departure. The lady next to me patted me and gave me a very dry moist towelette, which I dampened with water a flight attendant provided. Then I fell asleep again, feeling a little better. That feeling slipped away as the miles went by, however, so that as we came in to land in Chicago I had to borrow a barf bag from the patting lady. That flight thus has the dubious distinction of Most Vomits by Katie Ferguson In One Flight.

We had a very brief layover in the Chicago O’Hare Airport; thankfully, we had but to walk across the hall to reach our new gate. I felt queasy even off the plane. Somehow I kept my eyes tightly shut on the flight to Boston and during the pre-flight 30 minute wait in which mechanics checked out some warning light while we all sat claustrophobically in our seats. Only on the flight in did I fear tossing my cookies (of which I had very few left by that time), but although I held a bag ready I never needed it. We obtained our luggage from Carousel B, not A as the monitor suggested; found our ride waiting by the kerb, and dozed the hour ride back to Worcester.

We found the apartment fine, with a boquet of rather withered flowers confirming that even the brightest blossoms must fade away some time. People had come to work in our apartment, installing a fan that turns on with the light in the bathroom. They also left us the gift of a crap-clogged toilet which Ian gamely plunged immediately. So our toilet is filthy, despite its flushing okay now, and our shower is full of ceiling bits that fell with the fan installation. After dinner I discovered rotten, urine-smelling potatoes decomposing in one of our cabinets and cleaned that up, too.

On a brighter note, we both obtained our new WPI ID cards, which use a random number as our student ID numbers. Until now WPI has used the student’s Social Security number as their student number, printing the SS# right on the ID cards. Of course this means that anybody who loses the ID card has also compromised their Social Security number… My student ID number, interestingly enough, actually originated at Clark and I requested that it travel with me to WPI. So the new ID card just means another random number to memorize for one year; Ian, too, bemoans the fact that he has to re-memorize a new number with only one year left at WPI. Along the way we checked my mail box (full, but mostly junk) and I saw two people I knew as we walked around. Since we were so close, we also walked to Price Chopper and purchased a bare minimum of food to last us until tomorrow’s larger shopping trip. We pushed our way back through the humidity, gulped down icy but disgusting Worcester water, and collapsed for a nap on the bed.

Now I have to stay up only another hour or two until I can sleep for the night. Horizontally, thank goodness. And thus begins my fourth and final (God willing) year in Worcester, MA.