It’s hard work getting ready to leave a place. We’d pretty much spread out during our stay at Holly and Vince’s house, and the clutter had the same pattern as it does at home. We spent our last evening making sure everything that belonged to us got packed. I thought I’d done really well until Holly sent me an email two days later. She wrote, “No sign that you were here except a framed picture of two darling babies.” How could I have left my granddaughters behind?
We ate leftovers frantically, but the refrigerator was still fuller when we left than it had been when we got there. What do you do with little jars of mayonnaise and peanut butter? Put them in your luggage? And how about six leftover apples and half a loaf of bread?
The shuttle picked us up at 5:30 am. The driver was in a big hurry. We got to the airport three hours before we were due to leave. We ate an overpriced, mediocre breakfast in the airport coffee shop and got through security in ten minutes. I would have expected that Baltimore, being one of the major airports in the DC metropolitan area, would have been crawling with security people. We saw only two uniformed military men. I said thank you to both of them. They said I was welcome.
Baltimore to Chicago to Seattle. Turbulence on landing, as usual, as we descended through the cloud cover. The plane’s windows were spattered with rain as we taxied. We were home.
Conclusions
I’m ready to travel next to a place where I have never been, to share a new place with Art. My DC memories made it hard for me to see the city objectively this time. Art and I had different perceptions. He wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped he’d be. Still, I’m glad we were there in September of 2001. I didn’t take a thing for granted. As I think about it, that’s probably a good thing.