“Don’t call our hotel room HOME!”
The protest from The Kid (one of many from his backseat perch, the rest having to do, typically, with traffic) in the backseat came just after The Husband mentioned we’d be home soon. He was referring to our beachfront-and-now-extended-stay hotel in Santa Monica, a place we were meant to remain for three nights that have turned into (at last booking) five more, ever since Little Brother tested positive for Covid three days ago.
He woke up with a headache that turned into fatigue and a fever, and later that day we located a drive-through testing centre down the street that delivered the dreaded result fifteen minutes post-swab via text. We couldn’t believe it, but also…we could? Because we’ve been on a few planes and in a few public places since we arrived here in our ancestral homeland, including the spot where we theorise LB picked up his dash of Omicron: a flight from Park City to LA where he was seated across the aisle from–and carried on a flight-long conversation with–a football fan headed for the Rose Bowl whose mask was dropped long enough to down a few rounds of Jim Beam and Coke.
Two days later, TH started feeling poorly (and out came his sick uniform of hoodie and sweatpants). Today, I’ve been decimated by aches and chills. TK, as he puts it, has felt “strangely fine.”
So we’ve made this corner of the hotel, of the country, of this trip, our home of sorts: drives to the testing centre followed by car tours of Bel Air, Beverly Hills, and, today, Malibu (and Kanye’s beach house there). We’ve had way too much iPad time and an ungodly amount of Spongebob Squarepants. The boys have fought and made up and fought again. TH, before he got sick, ventured out to the local grocery store and purchased a bunch of cleaners and cleansers and shit since we are now housekeeping for this room.
It is not the vacation we planned, but travel with family never really is a vacation, is it? It’s just life in a different location.
Yesterday, before the aches and chills hit, I headed out solo to the beach. The other side of the Pacific has become home, and this side was unfamiliar, with the sun setting strangely over it and the sand stretching out seemingly forever. I stuck a toe into the wintry water, expecting a shock, and was surprised to not be–shocked, that is. In the past year, in our home across the ocean, I’ve gotten used to colder wintry water than that, it seems. Home, it can change a person.
I walked barefoot back across the sand and headed back home, that is, to our hotel room, where TK asked for a back massage and LB called out, “Hey Baby Girl,” and much like Pam could feel God in that Chili’s, I was–am–pretty sure his grace abounds in Swiffers and Netflix and the Southern pie shop down the street that delivers through Uber Eats, and Sudafed, and this very makeshift home of the four of us.