This is what life looks like: feeling the plane descend through clouds and smoke toward the city that is now one home of many, watching my children’s faces lift with delight upon recognition of that home, feeling the cord stretch between our hearts and the home we just left and the people there even as it slackens with our approach toward our people here. This country is on fire and we are returning to it, thankfully. This is crazy. This is life.
I got to see Little Women on our last day in America, and I say “got to” because it was an opportunity afforded to me by The Husband, who recognises the tenuousness of my mental health on a good day but especially on a day that is: post-Christmas; devoid of a hotel-room base because late checkout was at 2 and we don’t fly out until 11; full of choices regarding food that my body now regrets; tired from the weeks before and the impending hours of travel. So he took the boys to a cartoon while I sat, by myself and among others, in a darkened theatre and watched the March sisters charm their way, once again and more than ever, into my heart. It felt joyful. It felt comfortable. It was perfect.
Then I left through an exit and saw the “Emergency Exit Only” sign but pushed the door anyway and the buzzing started and people stared and an employee rushed, looking at me directly and saying, “Did you do that?” And I responded that I had and gave no explanation because there wasn’t one, I couldn’t explain except to say PEACE OUT, AMERICA, I AM DONE FOR THIS YEAR. And so my boys and I had one last hurrah in the lobby of our hotel with snacks and drinks and then boarded our plane and the welcoming arms of the Virgin Australia flight crew. And…scene.
For that part, at least. Now “real life” begins, whatever that means, but here’s what it seems to mean so far: trying to get used to this new house that I vacillate between tolerating and hating, filled as it is with carpet (I cannot, and in Sydney one should not, humid as the air is and I do NOT want to use the word moist but you know where I’m going here); two beaches in two days with two boys; running through smoke to get some exercise for lungs that are probably blackening; reconnecting with friends who are family; organising my way into a more hopeful attitude about said house; trying to maintain self-awareness about how this all is affecting my mental health (no worries, I get therapy on Friday, #blessed).
But here is what has come before and, in its beauty, gets sprinkled throughout the present through memory and grace:
A Sudanese Uber driver who piques The Kid’s interest and they go on to have a conversation about whether the government in Sudan is good (it is, now, but watch out for that country to the south); a flight attendant whose intuition seems to lock her, kindly, onto both my kids but especially TK, and I watch but can’t hear yet can only grin as they have a conversation through breakfast and are both smiling themselves; a girl at the hotel pool who befriends my boys and they proceed to pretend to be dogs and dolphins (her dad sounds like Harvey Weinstein and I try to ignore that); a boy in the airport lounge who sees my boys on their iPads and they proceed to make said lounge louder than it’s ever been with their exclamations over Roblox and, for some reason, poops. Bonus: his drunk mom makes me feel better about my comparatively modest alcohol intake, #grateful; running into the kids from TK’s (and now Little Brother’s!) school vacation care at the beach and seeing faces light up when they recognise the boys.
There is no longer a hotel card key in my wallet, but a house key in my pocket. There is smoke and missing family and present friends and beachside lingering and waning jet lag and wondering about the future. There is a love committed to us, that proves itself beyond my doubts and disbelief in every moment, until all I can do is just behold it and try to breathe in its beauty.
Just look how far we’ve come. Thousands of miles and back. So far, yet right where we started. Across the world and always home.