Here we are. Two kids next to me watching a movie and munching on apples. Aimee alone in the row behind, more than happy to give me the bulkhead seat in exchange for a few hours of not needing to look after anyone else’s needs besides her own. Me with a keyboard on the tray table wondering if I’ll have anything interesting to say on this one.
Ahh. I love the first day of a trip.
We’re currently flying to Miami for a short layover before heading south to Quito, Ecuador. Another wing of Aimee’s Peace Corps BFF trifecta also recently entered the Foreign Service (along with Cicely, our host in El Salvador a few years ago) and we’re off to visit them. This time it’s Alicia, living in Quito with her husband, Isaias, and two fun kids, Rennie and Nan. Our biannual-ish reunions with them have always been a ton of fun, and this one should be no different.
But first, as always, we needed to get there. This pre-departure build up was thankfully rather uneventful. The only advantage of moving from rental to travel trailer to back bedroom to other rental to front bedroom during our construction projects this past year is that we’ve trained the kids to sleep anywhere and we always have a bag half-packed. We only needed to toss in a few extra shirts and some sunscreen, and we'd be set for the month.
I say that, but in reality, this was a particularly luggage-intensive trip. We offered to bring Alicia anything that she had been having a hard time finding in Quito. Ever the baker, she asked for brown sugar and vanilla. So I was pretty sure I’d be the first person having to show that yes, it was actually sugar I was bringing into South America.
We also grabbed a few small gifts for another host family we'd be meeting. Between some convenient schedule rearranging and a very understanding boss, I was able to take a full month off* for this trip. So we’ll also be staying with an Indigenous family in the countryside for a couple of weeks.
[*Well, not all of that will be true PTO. I’ll be working remotely for a few days. We'll see how that goes. You'll be the first to know.]
But back to Phoenix. We got into town the night before, said hi to my sister and her family as we dropped off our dog (who, coincidentally, used to be Alicia's dog before she moved abroad), and took a quick dip in the hotel pool to survive even a few hours in Phoenix during mid-June.
After a good night of sleep in an airport hotel, the kids popped out of bed as soon as they heard us moving around. That had become the norm on first-day-of-the-trip mornings. They definitely got the travel bug from both of their parents.
Not wanting to cut things anywhere nearly as close as we did for Belize, we took an earlier shuttle than we needed to, and had plenty of time at the airport. Mimi and Aimee snuggled up and read in the lounge, but Quinn asked to Sky Train around the airport. So we went off in search of the closest station. It didn't take long for me to remember that the Sky Train is outside of security, which meant that we’d need to be, too.
You’ve read enough of my stories to pick up on the foreshadowing. Kid and dad outside of security, some unforeseen (but utterly predicable) delay, and then a sprint to the gate to sneak in just before it closes. But nope. Not this time. Quinn and I had a great time, saw a bunch of airplanes, and made it back well before boarding was complete. So instead, I’m going to throw my mom under the bus.
As soon as we went outside of security, it brought to mind a classic Stone family story. Comes up every couple of Thanksgivings. My mom, aunt, and I were coming back from a trip together at some point in my early 20s. Given my age and travel companions, we had probably been visiting my grandpa in Michigan. We had a brief layover in Phoenix before ultimately heading back to Tucson. The connection was already tight, and only made worse by a delay leaving Detroit. So we made a plan as our first flight was about to land. I’d run ahead and let the gate agent know we were coming, Judy would stop at customer service to ask something about her checked luggage (this was before the era of smartphone ubiquity). I don’t remember what she had to ask, but that’s not a key detail. The critical part is that my mom—a highly competent human in nearly every other setting, but a disjointed ball of nerves in an airport—just had to get to the gate. No extra tasks for her.
So after a dead sprint to the gate, I was able to let the agent know we were coming. She wouldn’t let me wait on the jetway, and had me take my seat. After an excruciating 10 minutes of hearing the final boarding calls, the fight attendant reached out to close the door, but then paused as footsteps came down the jet bridge. Aunt Judy! But just Aunt Judy. She and I exchanged glances across the airplane and said without moving our lips, “Wait?! Where’s mom?”
"Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats. The aircraft door has closed."
Ugh. The 25 minute flight from Phoenix to Tucson felt like an eternity as I admonished myself the entire time for being the worst son on the planet. As soon as we landed, I went to the gate agent (again, no cell phones) and asked about my mom. We learned that she had been rebooked and would be Tucson within the hour. Phew.
After a happy reunion, we asked my mom what happened. She told us that she had been so focused on getting to the gate that she put her head down and ran. And ran. And ran. She ran until she felt a gust of warm air and realized that she had run right past security and was currently standing fully outside on the arrivals curb. By the time she went back through, she had missed the flight by a full 20 minutes.
That is a true story. Not a detail was changed to protect the innocent. I’ll be hearing about this next Thanksgiving.
But our version of this story was much less dramatic. Quinn and I made it to the gate with plenty of time to spare, and settled in for a largely uneventful series of flights. Particularly as this was our first long flight with kids old enough to keep themselves busy on their own.
Hey, I’ll take it.
