game over
so here we are, sitting pretty at 38,000 feet of altitude, on our way back to NY. This is the end. Well, not exactly the end but close enough to the end for it to be scary and blues inducing. Camille is asleep next to me in a car seat strapped to a plane seat strapped to a plane strapped to nothing. Caitlin also sleeps on the opposite side of the car seat. I am awake and typing this. I am strapped to my seat, strapped to my two lovely women, strapped to a lot of good memories.
I started this journey reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and it is not entirely surprising that this tale of a long journey, far away from home, should come to mind when the time has come to set the walking stick down in the corner of a closet. We are facing a similar situation. A similar dilemma: How does one pick up the pieces of an old life? Can one truly come home after such an adventure? Obviously the world is a different place now than it was 10 months ago so we’re not exactly going back to the same place or the same life. In fact we don’t really know what we are going back to and that is a scary as it is exciting. Ok, more scary than exciting. But we’ll give it a try.
the road , again.
to consecrate our year on the road we tried extra hard to pack a lot of wandering action into our last 6 weeks. May saw us trekking Europe from Geneva to Vienna to Budapest to the south of France. We’re punch drunk, travelled-out, tapped-out. Now we really want to settle down somewhere for a while and not have to worry about what fits in our suitcases for heaven’s sakes! The amazing thing is we had a blast everywhere we went. Budapest was our first weekend together since Camille’s birth! We dumped baby at my parents and took off without looking back. Seriously, you hear all these things about parents freaking out about leaving their kids for a few days for the first time. uh…really? We didn’t. I need to acknowledge the fact that we left Camille with VERY well trained grand-parents who had five ruffians under their roof for close to a decade. After surviving that one should be given a medal AND a honorary degree in pediatrics. But I am losing my focus here: Camille is 21 months now, that’s 600 bad nights for Caitlin (and for me to some extent – and depending who you ask that extent varies greatly), about 4000 diapers, 1700 bottles, who knows how many washing machine loads and so on…After all that, one should be begging for a break. One should be entitled to make threats to get a break. You get the idea. Budapest was amazing. Strolls in the parks and the old town, soaking in the notorious Gellert baths, eating plenty of Goulash. Note to future visitors: the Danube, it ain’t blue no more. But you can still take a lovely boat ride on it and admire its banks for hours………
Then it was Vienna for a few days, avec Baby this time. We had the best weather, the best hosts, the best time. It was a privilege to see that my friend Denis has become quite a chef. Long will we remember the delicious meal he prepared for us. I had been in Vienna before but to be perfectly honest, my memories were a bit blurred by the vast amount of alcohol I ingested. The occasion of that first visit was Denis and Petra’s wedding and I can proudly say I was the last man standing that night. I collapsed in a hotel lobby chair with a bottle of champagne at 9am only to be waken up by the flash of a camera an hour later and shoved into a cab to the airport by Denis. Bye bye Vienna. I sobered up on the first leg of my flight Vienna London) and cured my hangover above the atlantic. So this time I made sure that Caitlin, Camille and I got to see plenty of the town. When we left we knew that we had visited one of these precious places where we could make a home if life decided to take us there. And that is always a good feeling.
Packing is the pits (last episode?)
To celebrate our frugal lives as globe trotters one last time we put everything we brought to Europe into suitcases and checked all that stuff into an airplane back to the US, and let me tell you it isn’t pretty. Did I say frugal? Well, that might have been the intention but, boy, we are taking home 7 suitcases and 4 carry-ons filled with about 400 lbs (200 kg for the metrically inclined) of cargo. Winter stuff, summer stuff, in-between season stuff, dad’s electronic gadgets and oversized shoes that fill up one suitcase, Camille’s clothes and toys. All of them! Even the ones she grew out of or doesn’t play with anymore. Have you dad’s out there ever tried to separate your wives from the stuff that their babies grew out of, puked on, destroyed, chewed-out to the point of non-recognition (think: Honey ! is this her toothbrush or my shoe horn?)?? I have. and it is just not possible. I know that in 25 years it will probably make someone happy but when I think of the amount of precious and expensive real estate square footage it will take to store all this stuff until then, I think I may have to take a special loan just for it. And then there’s mom’s stuff. Less than I thought but more than I had hoped. Lots of stuff, in spite of all our best intentions. We roll around gathring moss regardless of how hard we try not to.
Numbers.
10 (months away from New York)
12,000 (km driven across Europe)
7 (countries visited)
14 (maximum number of consecutive hours spent asleep by Camille after a long trip)
8 (days to get over the jetlag from Canada to Europe)
10 (books read during my sabbatical)
4 (days spent snowboarding this winter)
83 (height of Camille as of mid-May, in cm)
3 (exhibitions of Caitlin’s work during the last 10 months)
0 (lost stuffed animals – freakin’ miracle if you ask me)
16 (flights taken by Caitlin during the last 10 months)
13 (flights taken by Laurent during his sabbatical)
0 (kilos lost by Laurent during his sabbatical)
37 (minutes spent on average running 6.5km – still working on this one)
13 (beds slept in by Caitlin and Laurent together)
2 (trips to the hospital in the middle of the night with feverish child)
2768 (photographs shot during sabbatical)
287 (visits from Camille to our bed after she wakes up – I call these visits Sunrises)
the storm
I had a dream. A while ago. It was so crisp and felt so real that it has stayed with me for weeks now. I remember very few of my dreams and when I do, mostly I am disappointed by their apparent lack of meaning. Not this one: Caitlin, Camille and I are in a car driving on a sunny day. Random urban highway. There are cars around us, traffic is normal, we’re moving at 60 miles/hr or so. Everything is fine. We are smiling. And the cars around us, well they start being blown away by some kind of invisible storm. Cars flying by ours, left, right, and above (we have a sunroof). The road is swept clean by this powerful wind, but not us. We’re still on the asphalt, driving through this cloud of spinning metal and glass as if nothing were happening. The laws of physics are no longer applicable but we’re okay. We stay the course. The world no longer is what it was around us but somehow we are untouched. We are fine. We will be fine together. I like this dream.
