Landing safely

Thursday, December 7, 2006 9:15am DC time/ Friday, December 8, 2006 3:15 am NZ time

(Jennifer again) Nearly at the end of our flight to Auckland now, breakfast trays stacked in the empty middle seat between Naomi and me. We had a lovely morning yesterday with Robyn and Rivka and Sara (Michael’s cousin and her two little girls who live in DC but just happened to be in San Francisco yesterday). We saw the Golden Gate bridge and the sea lions at fisherman’s wharf, and we took the cable cars up and down huge hills—so fun. And then we got on our plane with lots of time to spare, and ended up finagling our way into two rows of three seats (with an empty seat in each row) on a plane that is nearly all the way full. And those empty seats turned out to be a blessing, because in the middle of the night (which I suppose it always is on this flight) Aidan started throwing up. We’re not sure what’s going on with him (the little boy behind him is throwing up too), but it has made for a less pleasant plane journey than it might have been otherwise. But he got great sleep, and so did Naomi, and even Michael slept pretty well, I think. And I slept on and off for 7 hours (sometimes long stretches of “off” but mostly it wasn’t so bad).

I cried when we left the ground in San Francisco (an improvement from the crying I did nearly the whole way from Dulles), and was amazed to feel nostalgic for the US, a country I can so often feel bad about. There’s lots to love about this country, a fantastic experiment in multi-cultural democracy which is founded on freedom and acceptance of difference. And if we, as a country, haven’t learned to live up to those ideals, it doesn’t make the hope for them any less rich.

We find ourselves in the enviable position of having fantastic lives in DC and also having all of the stars align for this great adventure of ours. It means that it is, as Naomi said, “Hard to leave but exciting to go to a new place.” Aidan, of course, (when he’s not throwing up) is only excited about rugby. He wants to spend all of his free time learning rugby (a game he’s never seen) and wants to play on the All Blacks, the New Zealand rugby team. It makes me wonder what our kiwi friend Keith said to Aidan while Keith and Trish were taking care of the kids so that Michael and I could have an overnight in New York city a couple of months ago. I’ll have to investigate that when we land.

Almost out of battery now as we speed toward Auckland. This flight, especially without a sick kid, isn’t as bad as it sounds. Long, yes. But not horrific. And now it’s coming to a close, and eventually we’ll see the sun rise (yes, uncle Bill, it’s been a 13 hour night on this flight) and we’ll land. Then we’ll clear customs, use our “returning resident’s visas” and head to our last flight to Wellington, and the start of our new lives. Wish us luck.