Tag: Adventure

6Aug

The TSA Should Be Banned

Navigating airport security with a toddler:

1) Grit teeth.
2) Take shoes off two-year-old.
3) Explain to distraught two-year-old that she will get her shoes back, provided that they don’t turn out to be flowery size-6T bombs.
4) Go through security gate to wait for our unsecured valuables.
5) Watch helplessly as husband–shoeless, beltless, and holding toddler–is instructed to take stroller to the farthest outskirts of civilization for special processing.
6) Observe x-ray technician letting our carry-ons through without even glancing at the screen.
7) Suppress the urge to put the carry-ons back through security just so someone will notice my excellent Ziploc-bagging skills.
8) Attempt to re-pack liquids and/or gels, laptops, teddy bears, and boarding passes while putting on shoes, belt, and four backpacks before next person in line manages to clear security gate. (Keep in mind that husband and child are still trekking back from the nether regions of Stroller Security Land.) Hope that next person in line will require a strip search.
9) Feel guilty.
10) Reunite with husband, daughter, and–eventually–stroller, once it has been deemed innocent of international terrorism. What a relief.

(We have, in fact, arrived in Italia. More updates once I snap out of the hazy world of Jet Lag.)

27Jul

Countdown Begins

After 7 months of being told “your papers will come any day now…”
After 960 unanswered phone calls to The Godfather…
After 2 summer moves to homes that aren’t actually ours…
After 6 excursions to the Italian Consulate…
After 38 emotional upheavals in the last week alone…
…the real countdown begins:

6 days until we leave for Italy.

Naturally, my brain has been replaced by a kaleidoscope. Cheerful orange elation clashes with deep purple worry, which keeps running headlong into clean green practicality, which occasionally shifts into an absurd yellow panic. And then there are the sudden revelations speckling across my vision like a TV gone haywire:
We won’t get Mac ‘n’ Cheese in Italy! (How will we ever survive?)
I’m going to be delivering this baby in a foreign country! (Do they know about C-sections over there?)
Italians speak Italian! (Why, oh why didn’t I put more effort into becoming fluent?)
We’re leaving behind some of the best friends we’ve ever had! (How have I never realized how much I’ll miss them?)

But then my less-placenta-brained husband reminds me of that day three years ago in Venice when we talked about throwing away our return tickets. And then I remember early morning bike rides and noontime strolls through the open markets and lazy afternoon drinks in the piazzas, sunset walks through the parks and hilarious late night gatherings in the pizzerias. I remember how effortlessly the Italians talk, their whole bodies animated with the joy of carrying on conversations. I remember the lovely winding roads and the rolling hills lined with grapevines. I remember the pizza and the pasta and the coffee and the wine and the chocolate.

And then all the pesky, swarming details seem less than important because, hey — we’re moving to Italy!

18Jul

Test Anxiety

Today was going to be The Day, the Yes or No Day. And, instead, we’re still very much stuck in the familiar territory Not Yet. A measly computer glitch now stands in the way of us seeing whether the door to Italy is open or closed.

And I can only find the energy to wonder…

Does he want to keep us pinned to Delaware, though our hearts are far away?

Is it punishment? A test of faith? A test of commonsense? A test of patience or emotional breaking points?

Is he stringing us along for a laugh? Is he simply standing by and watching bureaucracy string us along?

Are we supposed to be learning some grand life lesson? Is this all for the sake of a dinner-party story?

Because this is not dinner-party material. This is raw and murky and too agonizingly real to share a laugh over. This is our faith on the line–we’ve sold and packed and moved and tied off loose ends and trusted since November. We’ve used up our Plan Bs and our Plan Cs, and we’re still no closer to knowing whether our faith will be validated or thwarted.

And now comes that time of the show when my sinking mind finds out how much it believes a certain man called James:

“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who ‘worry their prayers’ are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.”(1:2-8, The Message)

16Jul

Pardon Me While I Burst Into Flames

I don’t know how to put today into words. That’s the problem with being stuck in a half-finished story, afraid that if I start telling it before the dénouement has had a fighting chance, karmic retribution will leave us spinning in limbo forever. And I don’t even believe in karma.

At least I’m fairly certain that we’ve already reached the story’s climax (I couldn’t be much closer to spontaneous combustion) and that a spectacular ending is lurking somewhere inside the next two weeks (or we will be living under a bridge). How’s that for optimism?

If you want the ineloquent, nutshell version of the last 24 hours, here ’tis:
– Dan and Bethany lie in bed trying to figure out where our plans for Italy went wrong and what we can do to survive at this point. Little things like lack of job, lack of house, baby due soon, you know.
– Dan tries one last time to call The Godfather, who–Miracle of Miracles–answers his phone! He tell us that we have finally received our authorization from the government. Stunned silence. Brief bout with disbelief. Surge of overwhelming excitement. We lie awake in the dark for hours fantasizing to-do lists, giddy at the thought of our dreams being back on track.
– Dan goes to pick up our faxed paperwork… which isn’t there. Long-distance calling ensues. Turns out that the government didn’t technically authorize us; they just decided we didn’t need The Form. (Just to clarify, this form in question is indeed the one we’ve been waiting for since January, the one we’re required to have to get a visa, the one our lives have been on hold over.) That’s it. No form. After all. this. time.
– Bethany enters a warp zone between crushing depression (no form = lives over), surging hope (maybe the visa office has changed its policy on required forms!), and numbing bewilderment (what to do now?).

Stay tuned for a special appearance by Jack Bauer, who will threaten the well-being of government employees’ kneecaps until they give up the location of our visa. Or, who will hunt us down because we are living under a bridge and thus look suspicious.

::Fade out::

30Jun

High School Daydreams

Ever since high school, Dave Matthews Band has made me think of about a guy I once shared brainwaves and heart-rhythms with. When I was 15, my thoughts were dreamy and slightly intoxicated with the hope of intertwining lives. My junior year of college, my thoughts were reeling from the Other Girl, the beauty pageant winner who voided every effortless laugh I had shared with him.

We never dated, but he inspired me to write and to live music and to run in the rain. Friends thought I would never need another muse. Friends thought I got engaged on the rebound from a relational paradise lost.

But the truth is that my muse was never mine–a fact I didn’t fully accept until he chose blonde hair over red. Once sober, I realized some other facts too: that his passion for life did not connect to a solid purpose, that our similarities of thought and personality would have driven us into a hole of brilliant moodiness.

I am earnestly grateful that I ended up recognizing a blurry-eyed obsession for what it was and saying “yes” to the right man. Dan’s soul provides the solidarity I’ve always needed, and our purposes for life blend together flawlessly. He keeps me laughing, but even more, he provides the optimism to balance out what I glumly call “realism.” Our eyes sparkle simultaneously when we talk about traveling, when we walk into a concert, when we snuggle together in restaurant booths.

One year ago, for our anniversary, Dan took me to a Dave Matthews show under the Pennsylvania stars. I stood barefoot in the grass, pressed up against my husband of three years, and never once thought about the boy that got away. I was supremely happy to be with the man who loves the red glints in my hair and encourages me relentlessly to be the Me I want most to be.

Now, with our second daughter on the way and an impending move to Italy to chase our dreams, I know more deeply than ever that I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my husband. You could probably call that a high school daydream all grown up.

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