This morning I swam laps in a pool for the first time in awhile and for the first time in a pool surrounded by snow…well, ever. I dodged The Husband and The Kid and Little Brother as they played basketball at the hoop in the shallow end (and sometimes ran directly, purposely, into them), and then we all jumped into the hot tub after as snow fell and the twenties (Fahrenheit) temps refrigerated the air around us.

This is all very strange, and we are used to strange. We are used to hotel Christmases and cross-world flights and jumping from one season to its opposite in the course of a day. Or, this year, in the course of the longest Christmas Day ever: one that started inside our house in Sydney, continued to the airport Covid testing centre, onto a flight to Fiji and through the airport there onto a flight to LAX.

And what a flight it was! In between viewings of A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation, I slept fitfully with LB crammed into the seat with me and occasionally hopped up to hoof it with TK to the bathroom to dispose of his motion sickness. That flight was not our longest, but it felt like it was. TK said as much when he announced, in the opposite of a Tiny Tim “God bless us every one” moment, that it was time to leave as we had been on that plane “for ten fucking hours.” Hashtag blessed.

We ate Christmas dinner in our hotel’s bar and, the next day, woke up to a flight that had not been cancelled despite rumours to the contrary. We made it to Salt Lake City and its fast food cornucopia of Wendy’s and Taco Bell, and then to Park City, where we finally–finally–made it to a mediocre Mexican restaurant to meet The Sis and Bro-in-Law and Nieces. Breathing Covid-saturated air the whole time through our masks, probably.

Since then, we’ve inhabited the dead zone between Christmas and New Year’s with more eventfulness than usual: The Sis’s panicked texts that they had found, upon arriving there, that their AirBnB had not been cleaned (let it heretofore be known as Pube Condo); sledding in inappropriate clothes then braving the wilds of Wal-Mart to purchase cheap appropriate ones; sledding more and eating snow upon falling; not skiing, every, enduring one perilous car trip through a squall (a squall!?!) to Pube Condo; reunions and re-unions over wine and dinner and kids. Breathing more Covid-saturated air the whole time, probably.

Oh, and we saw Spider-Man. But that will have to have its own post because I loved it so damn much. Mainly because of how, like planes and vomit and car drives and so much effort and even more grace, it brought together people I haven’t seen in too long and reminded me that home? It can travel.