The gentle hum of the jet engines, against the clutter and chatter in the kitchen, two rows behind me, took a little getting used to. Gladys, a mature stewardess with a condescending glare, interrupted me for the third time in the last hour. I pretended to ignore her by refusing to remove my headphones, taunting the veins in her neck to increase. When I thought she had suffered enough, I looked up and nodded. She grabbed my half-eaten bagel and shuttled off. Back in the day, they looked like beauty queens and smiled a lot. Now, they let anybody push that cart.

I resumed my focus on the eulogy I had been struggling to write. Nothing redeeming about her came to mind. The hurt she inflicted upon me surpassed the good. She left with no apology, regret or hint of remorse, except deep seeded issues that wouldn’t go away.

On my arrival at Gatwick Airport, I approached my father at the gate with a big smile. He casually leaned on the metal railing with those sad St. Bernard dog-eyes of unconcern. A man of little emotion, who knew what went on in that bald head of his?

He introduced me to Mary, my mother’s best friend, an affable white woman who belonged to their church. Mary more than made up for the excitement my father lacked, gushing with stories she had recently heard about me, apparently unaware of my existence before that.

In the car, Mary gushed condolences, and in the next breath, complained about the traffic. I sat in the back, half listening, watching the dull English countryside unfold. It was a typical, over-cast moody day, one of many reasons why I left.

We arrived at my parents’ small, attached row home on a cramped street of similar houses, which differed only by the lace curtains in the windows or the color of the doors. The street was lined with tiny fuel-efficient cars taking up almost every parking space, causing my father to complain, “This is why I never leave the house.”

Entering the gate to the house, struggling with too much luggage for my short stay, I pushed an overgrown shrub out of the way. My father followed me, apologizing for not having the time to prune the plant—for obvious reasons. Stepping into the family living room with its tightly-shut windows and stale air, nothing much had changed in the seventeen years since I was last here. The pattern of raised flowers on the cream colored wallpaper looked like they had wilted. The old stereo still stood where it had always been. A soiled doily rested on the head of my father’s armchair. Another one lay beneath a fake plant on the dining room table. While everything was clean, it all looked dated. A small picture of my parents stood on the