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November 26, 2007
I always love seeing the sign “Welcome To Canada” especially after a twelve
hour drive that should have been eight. You learn a lot about yourself on a
drive that’is long enough already but swollen an extra third. It’s like a
parent daring to fly by themselves with two kids under three. You plan it
for weeks in advance slightly altering their sleeping and eating schedule
until it looks as if they will feed just before take off and then
immediately pass out for two and a half hours, waking up only in time for
the three year old to walk off the plane. You board the flight safely,
arrive at the bulk head seats you requested and see there is an extra seat.
You breath deeply and look back at all the nice things you did that week and
vow to do more because the pay off is huge. You feed the kids, give the
oldest a bottle, buckle him in, cover him in a blanket and watch his eyes
slowly open and close until he surrenders to sleep. Then you nurse the baby
until she snores, you look around to find a friendly face to blurt out that
the baby , always a light sleeper has never snored before, sure you might
even be able to read your book! You pat yourself on the back and think about
how the tantrum your three year old had last week left you in tears and
second guessing if you were cut out for parenthood at all and now people in
the seat in front of you are turning around to say how beautiful and well
behaved your children are. As if in slow motion you realize everyone has
boarded the plane, they’ve closed the doors and the kids have been asleep
for fifteen minutes already, this is really cutting into your plan. You hear
the click of the loudspeaker and as much as you are willing them to say
take off is imminent, they are telling you there is slight engine trouble,
nothing to worry about, but everyone must remain on the plane, it shouldn’t
take more then a few hours. You sit there in shock as the attendant passes
out free drinks, while you’d like to down the whole cart, instead you eat
five packages of pretzels to carb load and steel yourself for the glares the
people in front of you are going to give you in exactly two hours when your
kids wake up and you haven’t left the ground yet. Who am I kidding? My drive
was nothing like that, in fact now it’s feeling like it could have been the
best twelve hours of my life.
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