Headed Home?

I woke up, got the kids dressed, then followed my uncle’s suggestion of taking the luggage to the airport early because my mom was having back pains and this would make it easier.  There was no one around to help me with my luggage.  Or rather there were men, but they said they didn’t work for Southwest which I guess meant they couldn’t help though later I heard their airline was owned by Southwest so technically they did work for Southwest, but whatever.  I rolled the luggage from the car that was parked at the curb some distance from the Southwest outdoor check in, but I made it work.  I stood in line, got to the front only to discover that one bag was ten pounds over.  I got out of line and started moving stuff around, then went back to the counter.   

Nope, it was still over, but the nice man was going to let it go.  Then he asked me where the rest of my party was.  What?  It seemed the customer service rep forgot to inform me that yes, while you can check your bags in four hours early you whole party had to be there to do it.  Crap!  I scrambled quickly and came up with well three of those other passengers, you know the ones with the same initials, those are my kids.  Thankfully he accepted that answer and put our luggage through after flirting with me a bit.  Was he hitting on me because I was looking good or because he looked to be in his 50s and anyone not his age was open to being hit on?  I wasn’t sure, but I ran to my car, thankfully that the Atlanta airport police weren’t little Nazis like the LAX ones.  This time it worked in my favor.  That took longer than expected, I hustled back to the hotel, having checked on before I left, grabbed the family, then off to the other hotel to say goodbye to the family members still left in town.  Time was a tickin'.

We said goodbye, drove off, until my mom forgot to give them something, so I turned around, searched some bags for what she was looking for, ran inside the hotel, found their room, and gave them the items.  I hopped back in the car and drove quickly yet safely to the airport.  Time was not on our side.  I got my mother to agree to go straight to the plane while I returned the car.  I assured her I would meet up with them.  I parked the car, took out the stroller, but the bags underneath, got the girls in, and saw them safely inside.  I left the airport and followed the signs to the car return place.  Why must they be so slow?  I finally just handed the guy the keys, double checked the car and took off.

“Don’t you want to wait until I check the car?” he said to my back.

“If something’s wrong with it, I bought insurance and you have my credit card number,” I said, as I ran to catch the train back to the airport.  I nicely asked if I could cut ahead of people in security.  I had to catch up with the fam.  I ran through the airport, hopped on the train, and got to the gate just as it was closing.  Crap!

I turned away from the gate and scanned the area for my mom.  Noooooo!!!!  They weren’t in the gate area.  My mom wouldn’t get on a plane without me, which meant she was somewhere in the Atlanta airport with the kids by herself.  Yikes!  I talked to the woman at the counter about getting on the next flight, it was overbooked, and most importantly, finding my family.  Had my mother not heard my correctly and was sitting inside the Southwest part of the airport waiting for me to return?  Please God, no.  I had kept an eye out for them as I ran through the airport.   

The woman at the counter told me to wait a few minutes, they might show up because since she took my boarding pass I couldn’t leave this terminal area.  Oh happy, happy, joy, joy! 

I wanted her to put an APB out on my family.  My mother was missing.  My mother was like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.  But I chilled and wondered around to the nearby shops.  I asked another employee how to find lost passengers and he gave me some song and dance which did nothing to put me at ease.  Maybe she was okay, she lived on this other three decades without me.  Decades without me helping her or guiding her through airports, she would be fine.  That’s what I told myself.  I picked up Rev. Billy Graham’s book Nearing Home.   

Did someone tell him that his kids weren’t really down with him titling a book, “One foot in heaven and the other foot almost in”?  I read the foreword and started crying as he spoke about being taught to live life as a believer, to be prepared to die as a believer, but having never been taught how to live to your 90s as a believer.  He talked about living without his wife of 65 years for the last five years.  I cried.  How do you fight the good fight as your body is breaking down, it won’t do what it used to do, what your mind says it should do and should be able to do cause it use to do it, when your loved ones leave you?  I cried.  Maybe I needed to by this book, but I set it down and headed back to the gate.  It was time to send out a search party for my mom and kids, and then there was the stroller.  My family had made it.

My mom said the woman at the counter told her to have a seat because I was looking for her.  Yiippeee counter woman!  I asked what took so long and she told me they searched all the bags to begin with.  Really?!?!  Stop with the PCness America, profiling at the airport is perfectly fine, 90% of Americans are fine with it.  You know who’s not a terrorist is the baby boomer with her three kids leaving her family reunion.  And on top of searching the bags, they questioned the kids on who she was to them.  Really?!?  Really?!?!  Maybe even more assuredly of my mom not being a terrorist is my mom being a kidnapper.  Ask anyone who knows her and they can assure you that the last thing on Lois’ mind is kidnapping, particularly kidnapping children.  The only reason she has those particularly three kids because they call her Oma aka grandma, otherwise she wouldn’t be caught dead with them.  As family members have said, they were surprised when she had me.

So there we sat one flight goes, two flights goes, then our name was called.  Oh no, it wasn’t us it was the Arrington family.  Are you kidding me?  Then our name was really called.  They have two seats.  Uh, dude did you forget there was five of us?  I talked to my mom, you go on the flight with Jory, and the girls and I will meet you at home.  Nope, she wouldn’t go for it, so we rejected those flights.

We sat and sat.  We nodded to the mom and son duo who were trying to get home to Texas.  And to the Southwest employee who was trying to get home with her two sons.  When the kids got restless we walked the terminal.  We walked to Chick-Fil-A with my cousin who had been dropped off at the airport to go back home to Arizona, then we watched her leave.  Finally I went up to the counter, “Can I get home today?”  The young man typed away and gave me my options.  I could fly out on the LA flight that had a lay-over in Chicago, but the Chicago portion was overbooked which meant we’d be the first to get tossed from the plane.  Awesome!  Or we could take the non-stop to Las Vegas, stay at a hotel there, then early the next morning fly home to LA.  Or we could come back tomorrow and get on the direct flight from LA that we had missed this morning.  Decisions.  Decisions. 

I walked past my mom and directly to the Southwest employee and gave her my options.  I had heard her earlier giving advice to the other mother and son duo trapped in the Southwest terminal.  It was like we were Tom Hanks in that movie where he was living in the airport.  She told me to get out of Atlanta, that was the most important thing.  Get out of Atlanta.  She suggested the Vegas flight since it was closer to home.  I took her advice, told my mom, and booked us on the 10PM flight going to Vegas. 

Jory and I left the girls playing with a baby in the gate area while we walked to the Mexican restaurant and got my mom a veggie burrito and a drink, then we walked down to Wendy’s to get ourselves some food.  We came back and ate.  I took out one of Jory’s book and started reading, while Rowan slept.  We walked around some more, watched the mom and son duo leave to a city that put them closer to home, but not quite home.  We lost track of the Southwest employee and her sons hopefully they finally got a flight out, then our flight was called.  After twelve hours at the airport, we were headed to the West Coast almost.  A big shout out to Rowan, Layla, and Jory for being so patient and non-crazy during the twelve hours.  Praise God for three awesome kids!

The plane held 172 people, there were 35 traveling.  The helpful employee told me I could lay the kids out on a row to themselves, but I didn’t feel comfortable with that idea.  I took out everyone’s blankets, wrapped them up, and tried to sleep.  It was all going well, until the baby woke up crying in the midst of a dream/nightmare, a dreammare.  I held her.  I rocked her.  I tried to calm her.  I felt I was succeeding until I felt wetness on me.  Yep, she peed on me.  Options.  Options.  Did I take a chance and change her clothes, then wake my mom so I could go to the bathroom and change my pants?  Or did I just leave her sleeping on me now that she was calm and change her when we landed in Las Vegas?  I went with option two, she was sleeping through the wetness and I was already wet, so score another one for the awesomeness of motherhood.