Atlanta, New York, Sydney…y’all ready? Let’s do this.
SYD–>ATL
What’s more fun than fourteen hours in the air with your two small children, I ask? That would be fourteen hours with your two small children when they only sleep for two. And y’all, I was ready. I was packing. I had phenergen and liquid melatonin for them, Xanax for me. We got on board that flight and a few hours in we pulled the shades, forced the medicine down, and said nighty-night. And two hours later, my #preciousoffspring responded, “Good morning, bitches.” Another dose of phenergen couldn’t even take them down. Of course, as soon as they fell asleep, I downed my Xanax with some Shiraz because #flightrules, so I awakened to The Kid tugging on my arm saying he needed to use the toilet (#bullshitartist), and I spent the rest of the flight recovering from my stupor.
It was a great way to kick off the trip, is what I’m saying.
We spent a night in LA sleeping, then all my men spent the next day sleeping as well while I watched a Twilight marathon from my bed. In the late afternoon, we spent a couple of hours riding the elevators and escalators because #hotelrules, then we all passed out again after dinner. The next day, we landed in Atlanta.
Weird. Weird walking into a house that was home for six years and is a place to visit now. Weird having some of our stuff there, some packed in boxes, and some across the ocean. Weird feeling out of place in my own bedroom.
But also…wonderful? Wonderful seeing dear friends. Wonderful sitting on a couch across from someone who knows me and reminds me that tension is a passing note, because we’re being held. Wonderful taking the bread and wine from another friend. Wonderful watching the kids descend upon their “Atlanta toys” like it was Christmas morning (also, #spoiled). Wonderful hearing The Husband and my parents talking at the dinner table while I watched TV with the boys on the couch. Wonderful sharing life again, briefly, with people we love.
And wonderful leaving for the next trip home…
ATL–>NYC
What’s better than visiting the city that grew you, the city where you found grace and got engaged? Visiting without diarrhoea or a hangover. BOOM (#nailedit).
Against all odds, I can breathe in New York. This antisocial-to-a-fair-degree introvert thrives being surrounded by people she doesn’t have to talk to. This is my space. And there are signs of home all over it: the briny smell of the East River, the incessant honking of cabs, the motion of a sea of people, and then…my stuff. I revisited my old street, 29th, and saw it again, and for the first time. There was my building, and the dry cleaner downstairs, and the preserved colonial home across the street, and the why-won’t-it-die bar from hell on the corner. But there was also the fire station I walked by every day without noticing it, and now I thought immediately of TK, how much it would thrill him to be that close to the engines. I saw the playground I walked past every day, and through often on the way to hit tennis balls against the wall next to it, and I imagined Little Brother conquering its slides. Things I barely noticed before, and now I imagined the most significant pieces of my life populating them.
We went to dinner. We saw a haunting and wonderful show that I’m still processing (I spilled wine on myself there and cried; #unrelated). We bounced from conferences bars to apartments to rooftops to restaurants in our solemn but exhausting vow not to let a little thing like and ocean make us disappear from people’s lives. I spoke and didn’t self-combust (or shit myself). We passed through, but deeply, which…is life, I think? Also I got a cupcake.
ATL–>SYD
“Not to be rude, but is he going to be quiet on this flight?” she asked me. “Because I have a meeting after we land and I need to get some sleep.”
I imagine punching that asshole in the face when I recollect her question, but in real life I just turned away and back to TK, who was behaving JUST GREAT, THANKS ten minutes into the boarding process of our return trip. One great thing about having kids is that they drastically reduce the number of f*cks you have left to give; I am down to zero currently. Another way of putting it? They turn your face–sometimes literally, damn them and their inability to understand personal space–toward what matters. For the next fourteen hours, I remained glued to TK, even while sleeping. As TH and LB slept a few rows back (because #dearhusband and #mamaneedsbusinessclass and #happywifehappylife), TK uttered, “Mommy. Come over here,” and we piled into the same seat to sleep. We took trips to the bar together for snacks; we (I) used the bathroom in tandem. And, wonder of wonders, it wasn’t totally suffocating. Because here’s what they don’t write in the expat handbook: your heart will be stretched across thousands of miles, your sense of split homes will feel like split personalities, and you will be jet lagged with regularity and beyond belief. BUT. You will truly know your family again, and for the first time. And when your son, who is perched between your legs watching TV in a reclined seat while you try to sleep, turns and stares deeply into your eyes then explodes into a heart-bursting grin, you will finally know where home is.
And then you land. And you see it again and for the millionth time, the road that goes to your house. And the four of you walk in and breathe again.
TK goes to school the next day with that same grin, greeted with hugs and shouts. “James! You’re finally back,” the handyman says with a smile as he passes by, and I remember that we haven’t been here long, but we are known. I go to a wine night with some of the mums from his class, and I am slowly and awkwardly (as is my custom) getting to know them. The boys go to their first joint swim lesson and cheer each other on and don’t cry once, and when we’re done TK spots the glass elevator on the way out–the one that looks strangely similar to the one from his pool back in Atlanta–and just like that, we still get to take end-of-lesson lift rides.
The boys and I emerge from the car one afternoon and walk to the top of the concrete steps that lead down to the beach below, and as I gather their shoes and prepare to descend with them, LB announces, “HERE WE ARE!” It hits me, with the chill of an autumn breeze, that until now, I’d always visited the beach in warmer months. Now I will experience it in the winter. And every other season. Now I will really know it, for the first time. All of it. We are being held, taken through the liturgy that is life in all its old and new, words and prayers, known and unknown, and we are showing up for every season. For now, this home. And here we are.