A bit of madness is key to give us new colours to see. –La La Land
“THIS IS SO WEIRD.”
It’s what The Husband and I kept repeating to each other from the moment our car hit I-85 and headed north, away from the airport and toward our house–our Atlanta house, as The Kid calls it. As we took Exit 5A and stopped by Chick-Fil-A to pick up dinner. As we pulled into our neighbourhood and headed down its familiar streets. And especially as we entered our house and flung our suitcases to the ground. Our familiar yet foreign house–one of two that meets such description, I suppose–the house whose ceiling seemed lower and walls seemed closer than before, the house where things are like we left them but also not, the house we grew into over six years and now feel to be growing out, or away, from.
Also, the cleaners hadn’t come like they said they would, which blew.
Our return trip began, I guess, before we even moved, a date on the horizon filled with hope. As it drew closer I pushed it away, fearing the travel ordeal, the jet lag, the emotional underpinnings. Saturday I did a half-dozen loads of laundry and packed three suitcases and grew more anxious and tense by the second. We took the boys to the zoo where there were meltdowns and euphoric moments, whining and flying above the terrain in a sky car, tears and views of the Harbour Bridge. That night, we went as a family to the restaurant where TH and I ate lunch the day we looked at schools. That afternoon I’d sat with him at the table, facing the water with a glass full of rosé and a heart emptied of hope. On Saturday, we sat with the boys, and TK approached another table where a boy his age sat with his parents. He was invited to play with Legos, which he did for a bit, as Little Brother narrated our tableau, and the waves rolled and crashed outside the window. The day before, I had run along that same beach, already missing it. On Saturday, the boys wanted to take their turn running on the beach, so I sipped my wine and watched them as TH took them outside and I waited for the bill. A few minutes later I was with them, chasing them across the sand to chants of “MORE!” TH and I looked at each other: Where else in the world would we have this? The ocean our backyard, Saturday nights filled with waves? I took snapshots in my mind like I was at Jim and Pam’s wedding. Three and a half months is how long it took to fall in love with this place.
The next day we boarded our flight and our kids proved their resistance to drowsiness-inducing drugs, sleeping for only two hours each on the fourteen-hour journey. We landed in LA exhausted and confused and crashed at the hotel. After a marathon sleeping sesh (them) and a Twilight marathon (me), our carless asses headed to the lobby to search for entertainment, which we found in the form of elevators and escalators. We had two Easters, neither typical: one on the plane and one in a hotel. We ate dinner at the bar and slept in two beds, one kid with each of us, and I marvelled at the changes over the past season: how much closer we are, how much growing the boys have done, how this adventure is changing us all, knitting us together.
Yesterday TH and I took TK for his fifth annual MRI, a tradition I’d rather pass on but Management (in the form of God and TH’s neurosurgeon) have assured me that won’t happen in the near future. I watched my brave boy follow the nurse back to the radiology department, gazed as he mounted the scale without the tears of years past, grinned as he tearlessly underwent the administering of the IV. Then I carried him to the MRI room and he lost his shit. But hey…progress! (This was NOT the camera he had envisioned. Fair enough.) A couple of hours later we got the good news, which was that there were no changes, and we headed back to our Atlanta house to be complete as four again.
This morning the ceilings weren’t as low and the walls weren’t as close. We went back to our gym–our Atlanta gym–and were greeted by faces that know us. The boys found their old places and people. I ran along my old route. We came back to the house and played and talked and they were being so sweet to each other, to me, and I thought about how much they’ve grown, how maybe this was how the trip would be: their comments, my laughter, our peaceful cuddles.
Lucky for you, I didn’t start writing then.
Soon enough they were picking and fighting. We went to Target, then Publix, where I approached the register and discovered I didn’t have my wallet. I hauled the boys outside and back in twice before realising I had left it in the Target cart. In the parking lot. One sweaty, yelly ride later, I found it right where it had been left. I flipped on my windshield wipers instead of my turn signal. I went to Trader Joe’s and very possibly caused a huge dent in someone’s car by not tucking our cart in properly–all I saw was one renegade cart bounding across the parking lot and into a Lexus. I gave them my information and prayed they wouldn’t use it. Then I headed back to the house with the boys, considering that I can feel crazy on any continent; that competence is a trait I feel in scant possession of and this is not likely to change soon, regardless of hemisphere; and, finally and most importantly, that grace is taking all of the events that would have formerly been to my shame and decreasing the amount of time between said event and self-forgiveness, and between that forgiveness and laughter. Grace is literally un-shaming me, and it only took me thirty-nine years to fall in love with it.
It’s amazing how much growing I’ve done.
On the way back from our adventure, TK asked me where his toy jeep was. I grimaced–there was no way in HELL I was going to show my face in that Publix again, un-shaming be damned–and told him I didn’t know. “Did you leave it at home?” I asked.
He considered the possibility. “No,” he finally replied, encapsulating the last three months in his response. “I left it at the Atlanta house.”