Home Sweet Home

I can’t figure out how to tell this story from the start so I am opting for the middle, or some part of the middle, somewhere in between where my head fell off and where it exploded.

After eight hours in various cramped planes and stale-air airports, K, barely 3, shouted to the acid space, “Okay, my back hurts! I want to get off this place, okay? My back hurrrrrtttttssss and now I am ready to go!” For emphasis and to make it clear that “off” was what he wanted, he added the magic word: “Please. Please? Please!”

It was mournful. I could not grant his wish. We were countless of thousands of feet in the sky and as much as I wanted to, I could not ditch him there. Instead, I said loudly enough so maybe the other weary passengers might hear, and then absolve him, and me: “I want to get off this place too. Please.”

(I am not ever sure who I feel worse for when my kids are at their end: me or everyone who has to listen to them.)

There is no better birth control then traveling with kids. We wrangled them through the parking lot, and then through a mass of bodies to security (shoes off, shoes on) and when we passed through (and they’d taken all our lighters), we had entered the 7th ring of air travel: delays leading to missed connections and no one giving a crap. If they had taped us dealing with the person telling us we were basically stranded and that they MIGHT be able to put us all on a bus for two hours -- to take us to another airport that may or may not get us to Denver -- when we need to go to Boston, it would have shown like a PSA for abstinence.

It would have made a killer commercial, and the notes would have read like this:

“Mother of three, wife to one, stuck in the middle of some timeless, spaceless place must make three children live on mini pretzels and little else. At the same time, she must negotiate the fury of the husband, who is taking his anxiety out on the shrimpy, polyestered employee. She figures his hulking size is a minus here as he appears minutes away from spending the night in the joint. She must do this while lugging ridiculous carry-ons filled with old candy and coloring books and half-eaten crayons. She must also carry three straw-topped cups of blue juice that might be the only post-x-ray fluids her kids can get. She grabs their hands. She wrings her own neck. She swears she will never have sex again.”

Cut. Done. It’s a wrap.

But I digress.

Truth be told: it was a wonderful vacation. My father and his wife spoiled us. Their home is a movie-set of perfection, with idyllic sidewalks and lawns and pools empty but for us. I cooked once in ten days. I did our laundry, collected our debris but for those ten days, I gave up my life and it was delicious.

That furious husband of mine – the one, who by the way, strolls even after getting almost booted from the airport, who strolls even when we have THREE MINUTES to make the next plane (the one that will finally get us home) – that man -- he entered a new realm of “relaxed” while we were away. He was with us for real and it was good.

I used to have such anxiety about flying. There was a time when I worried I would never get on a plane again. I even feared ones I wasn’t on. Every plane flying over our house was a weapon. It was a missile aimed for me that would strike and ruin everything I loved. I leapt to the window with each jet engine sound, flinging back the covers of my sleep in some perverse and terror stricken version of “Twas the Night Before…”

I am happy to report that this plane anxiety is lost to me now.

I doubt my itty-bitty enormous is at the top of any body’s hit-list. And even if it were (and maybe it is), I couldn’t do anything about it. Can I stop the plane with my flabby arms from my window? Can I save the world (and us too) just by paying attention?

Control and security live in two different houses, in two different countries really. I know now that one does not beget the other. I get on planes, with my posse in tow, I gather up the supplies we need, and I don’t grab the armrest at a turbulent lurch anymore. I know I can’t save them when the thing goes down, just as I can’t stop that kid from whining or wiggling because frankly I wanted to do the same. This is how it is being barely three on a plane, being me on plane with him, and the rest, my sweet girls so concerned and worried and my giant husband, laying his head on my shoulder when the twelfth hour of this nightmare was winding down, just laying it there, on me.

I started in the middle but I’ll finish at the end. We got home safely.
I thought my oldest daughter, always observant and honest, might view our un-gated, non-manicured, paint-peeling ‘hood with some kind of disdain. But she didn’t.

She said, “It’s exciting to be home. I missed it here.” And then she fell asleep for the whole night, and I did too.