Coming home on a jet plane

I do not think I’ve ever been more excited about an airplane than I was today. The problem was that we weren’t quite sure which plane to be so excited about. On my way out the door to get Naomi, I stopped to check her flight to be sure it was on time. I looked at the Girl Guides letter to get the flight information. Only one problem—there was no flight by that airline with those numbers. Or at that time. We tried to research the whole thing by calling various airlines, but they wouldn’t disclose any information (of course). So we found an airplane with the same times from to same departure city (although with a different airline and flight number) and we went to that gate to meet her there. We figured that we were in the right place by the vast numbers of families waiting outside the gate. I was all aflutter.

The plane was late, and I kept sneaking towards the security guards who had a better vantage point to see if I could watch it pull up to the gate. Finally one of them called out to me: “It just pulled in—she’ll be out in just a minute or two.” I suppose I had Nervous-Girl-Guide-Mother written all over me. Eventually the passengers started to trickle out. The first set, led by a grandmotherly-type, looked at the mass of families gathered and laughed. “They’re coming!” she told us. “There are Girl Guides on the plane?” I called after her. “You better believe it!” said another disembarking passenger, rolling his eyes, “And I’m glad they’re going home with you and not me!” The hallway, filled with people who were also glad the girls weren’t going home with this strange man, laughed appreciatively at his joke. And then there were Guides. They, who had gotten on to the plane ten days ago bright-eyed, their mint-green fleeces pristine, were now a motley crew. They tumbled off the plane in small packs, rumpled and exhausted, to pour limply into the arms of waiting parents.

I scanned the crowd, waiting waiting. And then there she was—bleary eyed and stumbling under the weight of a too-heavy back pack. My eyes filled with tears and I held her and held her (terrible pictures today, but check out Aidan’s face in the first picture). Exhausted, she mumbled a couple of words of greeting. “Would you like to tell us stories or would you like to just be quiet together for a little while and get used to being home again?” I asked her. She wanted quiet and fresh air so while Michael waited for the luggage, we went outside to breathe in the crisp scent of taxi fumes and cigarette smoke. These must have been just what she needed, because in seconds the silence was broken in a major onslaught of words. Stories poured out in a torrent that didn’t stop for several hours. Every word was a jewel, a reminder of how much I loved this child, how much I had missed her, how interesting her perspective was, how lovely and idiosyncratic her vocabulary.

I have loved my time alone with Aidan. I have loved watching him as the center of attention. At a barbeque last night, he held court and amused all the party-goers, who flocked around him (mostly women in their 50s and beyond) and gleefully repeated some of his particularly clever phrases, rolling his words and ideas around in their mouths. He has done well as king of the castle and has survived his longest separation ever from his sister. I worried that he would resent his sister’s return as she knocked him back into little-brother status. Great was his joy at seeing her, though. He listened intently to each story, occasionally asking a question or asserting her intelligence/ skill/ courage/ luck or other forms of excellence. It wasn’t for several hours that the general bickering began.

And now, after a walk up the beach to the pizza shop and a slice of Jane’s birthday cake after a bubble bath, Naomi is tucked up into bed for the first time in ten nights. She is weary and pleased to be home, with none of the post-vacation blues she has tended towards in the past. It is, in fact, the perfect combination—a little girl who was delighted to be away when she was away and is delighted to be home now that she’s home. And me? I am the mother who keeps stopping in her tracks and holding her big girl in a full body hug for minutes at a time.