Back to summer. Back to driving and walking on the left-hand side. Back to the Christmas decorations we didn’t take down before we left. Back to school starting in February and supplies being purchased in January.
Back to missing family. Back to reconnecting with friends. Back to drinking less during the week. Back to familiar runs and our own beds. Back to smaller washing machines and more loads of laundry. Back to not living out of suitcases. Back to having room to breathe.
Back to being a day ahead. Back to calculating the time difference by moving backwards. Back to voice messages and texts with those we left behind.
Back to not sharing one bathroom, thank God.
I hope those people we went to see, then left where they were, know what we went through to be with them. That, despite our (my) complaining, we must love them a hell of a lot to go through what we did, what we do with semi-regularity: the late-night, glassy-eyed trudging through airport security. The shoving of our lives into suitcases until they literally pop open. The jet lag both ways. The waking up on planes to the sound of our children crying out for us just before barfing all over their seats. The disoriented and repeated stumbling through the dark to airport bathrooms. The suspension between time, between days, between hemispheres of our hearts, minds, bodies, that never truly subsides even once we’ve landed. The evading of the question “will you ever come back?” because you’re not sure and you don’t want them to think it’s because you don’t care, but you know what a gift this place is to you all, and you can neither imagine leaving that or not ever returning to them.
It’s not like travel is the Oregon Trail these days, but it’s still harrowing. Before, during, and after.
Our last full day there, after my last Santa Monica-Venice run, after we played Marco Polo in the hotel pool and while The Husband worked down the street, the boys and I found a restaurant and sat down for lunch. “I’m tired, hungry, and bored, all mashed up,” The Kid said, and Little Brother and I agreed with this apt description. A month away from our dog and home and we were done. But not yet, because we had a few things ahead of us: an incredible meal served by a waiter from Atlanta; two final vaccinations; the news that our PCR results were all negative; a hotel dinner and a shuttle to the airport; a ten-hour flight filled with vomit from The Kid and tears from Little Brother (“I just want to be HOME!“–same, boy); a traffic-filled ride to our house with tense words exchanged before we finally washed all the travel off and convened on the couch to pass out.
Afterward, it all feels sort of like a dream. The memories have piled up and been reshuffled into the past, and for a moment everything here looks and sounds and smells and tastes and feels new. Like a gift. That first night of sleep–heaven. My run that first morning–easy, and capped off by a rainbow. The reminders that we are where we’re meant to be. The twinges of sadness when the Christmas cards from loved ones back in the US arrive. The thousand daily realities of life, of love, spent in more than one place.
Our first family walk with the dog, when we pass the ladies whose own dog knows him, and TK and LB show them their new shirts. “What’s that say on yours?” one asks TK, and he answers with what I had failed to see when I bought it: “It’s what on the inside that counts.” Sometimes you have to travel there and back again to see what’s right in front of your face.