Fly Away

Can I?

Please?

Just flap my winds and rise above the stubborn whines of children.

Not that I want to get on a plane again after 20 hours of travel from Cape Cod to Anchorage, but my kids are falling apart now that we're home. The post vacation crash. And sure, I'm tired too and a bit overwhelmed so my responses to their complaints are less than stellar, but man, they exhaust me. 

Nick is asleep as I write, in bed with Olive, lost to the goodnight battle with children. Missing this precious time when we are not called upon to react.

So back to flying.

I must say Elias and Olive rocked the flights. Well-behaved with a few minor hiccups, like Elias throwing up on one flight and knocking a man's beer over on another, but besides these blips they made me proud. Slightly embarrassed at times but not ready to disown them.

An older woman asked Elias his age as we waited to get off the plane in Seattle.

"I'm ten. How old are you?"

"Oh, almost 100."

"Really!!! You are almost 100?!!!" he shouted.

"Well, I'm 80 something, I forget."

"My Mom is 41 and my Dad is 36." Laughter from the surrounding aisles.

"He says it like it is, huh?"

"Yep, thats my boy."

Concrete and literal.

On every flight he looks over the safety information card but I just realized on this trip he pulls it out of the seat-back compartment right after the flight attendant shows it and says, "Please look over the card before take off."

On all five flights, Elias pulled the card out directly after the flight attendant recommended we look at it. He might have been the only one on the plane to do so.

"If there's an accident I'm following him," said the young woman next to me on our last flight when I told her to watch.

And yet we made it across the country without any major mishaps.

I apologized to the man with the white ponytail who, when Elias walked down the aisle cane-free, suddenly found his Alaskan Amber in his lap, and I asked the stewardess to give him a towel and a second beer.

"Sorry, my son has Cerebral Palsy and his balance is a bit off."

His scowl lightened and he said, "Its ok."

And really, it was ok.

And here too, I will be ok.

I will survive the meltdowns and the tantrums and the whining because really, what else is there to do but to carry on.

When we landed in Anchorage, Nick carried a sleepy Olive to the parking garage to pick up our car and Elias and I waited for our bags. Elias stood at his favorite spot, where the bags come out of a dark hole to fall to the circular conveyor belt below. "Bang!," he said after each bag  fell in a louder than inside voice and it would have been nice if his shirt said: I'm not strange I'm autistic.

"Bang!' He'd smile and jump up and down on his canes as I looked for our blue and orange bags."Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

When all four emerged, I strapped two to my back along with my backpack and dragged the other wheel-less two across the airport as people stared at Elias and me. I caught eyes with a small Hmong woman surrounded by children who smiled at me in a knowing way.

I smiled back and carried on.

Comments

[Kate]

Glad you're back! I always feel that post vacation/ reality crush/ melancholy and yet we carry on. Hope it is a beautiful summer there with lots of light on every level!