You Have Arrived

This is the third time I have been lucky enough to join Michael on a work trip of his. I am now used to the system of renting a car from Hertz and using their GPS navigation systems to get us to where we need to be. We have our own GPS at home, a Garmin, but the one that comes with Hertz rental cars has a very nice feature. When you get to point B from point A, instead of saying "arriving at address," like our Garmin does, it says, "you have arrived."

I will never get tired of hearing that. I like to think that the creators of this system knew I needed a little boost to my self-esteem, some assurance that I'm doing okay. I have arrived. I've made it. I'm awesome.

Today I needed to hear it. I felt like I was falling apart at the seams. It has begun to sink in that my maternity leave is coming to an end in a couple of weeks, and that another adjustment to life will take place. What will it look like? How will I get through day after day of working full time and barely seeing my son? Who will drop him off and pick him up from day care? Oh wait, what are we doing for day care? How will I get myself together enough to make food for all three of us every night and lunches and diaper bags and laptop bags all readied for the next day?

With these questions nagging at the back of my mind, we headed for the airport to head home today. I watched as a man sitting at our gate sneezed without covering any part of his face, then blew his nose and mindlessly tucked his boogered kleenex back in his pocket. My mind couldn't help recalling a 23-year-old college student in Cincinnati, a few miles from where we were, who had just died from complications of H1N1. I looked at Oliver and wanted to build a plexiglass bubble around his stroller. We had more complications in the security checkpoint again, where I was asked to hand Oliver to Michael while I was hand-checked; my poor husband had to manage our 3 carry-ons plus carseat and stroller, two bags of hand-checked liquids, and our 3-month-old all by himself. My blood pressure rose. We had to walk outside in the rain to get to our plane again. We got scowling looks from impatient passengers lined up behind us as we folded up the stroller before getting on the plane.

Having nothing in my control and hating it, I sat down, finangled the carry-ons, baby, seat-belt, and a quick snack before we started to taxi. I began to tear up. Michael asked over and over what was wrong, but I wasn't quite sure myself. Sure, getting through the airport was a hassle. But Oliver was a cherub, and did nothing but sleep or check out the raindrops on the window through the process. We all got through just fine. What was my problem?

And it occurred to me that I was afriad. Afriad of what I didn't know, and what would happen. How the travelling would go this time around, how I would deal with going back to work, what it would take to get ourselves into a pattern of life this month. I just want to get there and not have to go through the figuring out, the trial-and-error, the unexpected.

At the end of a very peaceful flight, we waited as the passengers seated around us exited before us. Two buisnessmen looked at us in surprise. "Wow," one of them said. "I didn't even know there was a baby on the plane! What a great little traveller!" We proudly agreed that our son was pretty remarkable. We had arrived. And will continue to do so, from time to time.