Drowned Rats and the Baggage Game

Day 15

Bergen, Noway to Knoxville, TN USA

It was 3am and we were in the atrium of the boat with a gaggle of other tourists. Drinking coffee from little to-go cups and not eating pastries because it was way-too-early for breakfast. Waiting for someone to tell us what to do next.

Groups one and two go ahead, somebody announced. We got up with just our carry-on luggage and trooped our way off the boat. Goodbye boat, we said. We passed the crew members who promised Terrye the moon and never delivered and they looked at us blankly like they’d never seen us before. Plastic smiles and Thank You For Choosing Viking over and over to all the people. Past the crew members who clearly cared about us and for us. Faces and names we’d come to know, their smiles genuine. They knew our names too and called us all Miss First Name and made us feel like loved royalty. We smiled back as big as we could and told them we’d miss them and maybe we’d see them again someday, even though we all knew that wasn’t true.

We entered a large room with people and luggage all over the place. The luggage, pretending to be in some sense of order, was in several groups. Men in vests ran around yelling things about green tags and number groups and we had no idea what was happening. Somehow it became clear that people were looking for and taking their luggage with them. The luggage we all set out last night at 10pm so someone could handle baggage transfer for us. People started roaming around through all the bag groups and the Vested Men were yelling ‘Can I Help You’ at people in such a way that they knew they were being scolded but weren’t totally sure why.

People were grabbing bags and heading down a hallway. I see your bag Mom, and yours is over there Janet, I said. Maybe a little panicky. Maybe a little frantic. Maybe a little What The Fuck is Happening.

We got to the door with all our suitcases and it was pouring rain. Pouring. Sheeting. Down-Spouting. And the Viking People were trying to push us out into the rain with no umbrellas toward the buses. We stood there. I had my precious artwork in one of those paper tubes with the little plastic plugs on the ends. Paper-in-paper in the rain. I stuffed the whole tube under my sweatshirt and it stuck out on both ends but it was the best I could do. Lines were forming outside the buses and we didn’t want to stand out there. We waited for a minute until the soggy people had kind of filtered their way onto the buses and we made a dash for it. Our suitcases clackity-clacking their way across the bumpy asphalt. We got to the door and the Driver Guy was telling us that our luggage should be taken to the other side of the bus.

‘The Other Side?’ I said, with the total attitude of a teenager asked to do the dishes. ‘Just give it to me – I’ll take it’, he said as he pulled the handle of my bag and kind of tossed it behind him. Rain pouring down. We climbed up onto the bus, pushing our wet hair out of our faces.

Well that was a shit-show, I announced to all the other drowned rats on the bus. We all smiled at each other in the knowing way that you do when the whole group just had a shared crappy experience. And it made you all close in some weird way. A Brand New Team.

At some point there were enough dripping people on board to head out to the airport. The Driver Guy stood up and made some cheesy announcement about ‘Trust Viking – Your Luggage Will Be Just Fine’ but no one drew any real comfort from that. The bus stopped three times in the first five minutes because the door to the luggage compartment kept opening on its own. Everyone on the left side of the bus made a game of being ready to count the bags that fell out as we moved along and everyone else decided there were trolls in there, playing tricks as trolls do. Since we were in Norway, after all, and this is where trolls live, after all. And it was 3:30 in the morning, after all.

Mom and I laughed too hard, as we do when we’re really tired. I asked her if I was being annoying and she said no and we laughed some more until we were wiping our tears and not really sure what was funny to start with. And Janet kept saying, ‘My Soup is Too Wet’ and we’d choke from laughter. And one of us said, ‘Aw why don’t you just go buy some emeralds?’ As though it were the worst insult ever. And we snorted and wiped our eyes some more and the rest of the bus was either amused or irritated, but we didn’t notice which.

The people on the Left kept playing their Falling Baggage Game and when we got to the airport, more Vested Guys pulled our bags everywhere and there was a bunch of scurrying around and finding all the things and then the right porter. Getting in some long line where they only had one lady checking in a thousand million people. And then we were all cranky.

Some jerk that worked for the airlines took our passports to check us in through the kiosk but did it wrong and then we had to wait even longer for the one lady at the booth. And when we got there she said we shouldn’t have checked in through that guy – as though we were naughty children and should’ve known better. And The Hacker was back there in the line somewhere, coughing her brains out. We said ‘What the Fuck is Going On’ a lot and wondered why didn’t somebody get her some Robitussin for crying out loud. Doesn’t her husband even love her?

They became very suspicious of Aunt Terrye’s cast, so they scanned her and wanded her and patted her down until she was super pissed off. Then they went after Janet with the wand too. And they were mad that I put my backpack on top of my computer, so they flagged all my stuff, swabbing everything for gun powder residue and generally pawing around. They scolded me for not knowing better and got really slammy with my stuff to show me how everything was Supposed to Go in Separate Bins, and then they put it all through the x-ray scanner thing again. They took my art tube and stuck it somewhere else and we couldn’t find anything and we were super frazzled and all irritated and it was, like, 4:30am and where the fuck was the coffee now?

Somehow we made it to the plane and they announced that anyone with seats in row 20 and above needed to use the second door. We looked at our tickets. Row 21. We had no idea what the second door thing was about. We Walked The Plank and sure enough, they shoved us through Door #2. Out into a light drizzle where we had to take all of our luggage down a set of stairs, across the tarmac, back up a flight of stairs, and in through the back end of the plane. Terrye looked at her broken arm in its sling. Pissed Off Moment #2. I helped her get her stuff down and across and back up.

‘Some guy was just complaining about being in the rain’, Mom said. ‘He doesn’t even know a thing about standing in the rain. Not like we do.’

We had a quick flight to Amsterdam and a much longer one to Atlanta, Georgia. Then we found out that our bags were only checked to Atlanta and we had to go in and out of customs and security and get this piece of paper twice and get our bags and take them over there. No, not there, go there. People alternately treating us like we were flies or four year olds who needed extra explaining.

Terrye very nearly lost her shit completely. Having never seen Terrye even irritated, though she raised five of my cousins, it was both heart-rending and fascinating to watch her just…go.

After a million years, we were at our gate and there was a door beeping loudly for well over an hour and no one who worked there seemed to give a shit. They all had alarm fatigue anyway and just sat nearby, eyes glassed over. My mom begged them to turn it off and they just had excellent customer service responses like, ‘Yeah it’s the door – it just does that sometimes’.

I was going to lose my own shit, so I wandered off quite a ways and called my husband. He assured me he was in full support of Terrye losing her shit on anybody she wanted to. He had her back.

‘I want you to know how much I appreciate you’, my husband said. ‘And I appreciate all the things you do around the house. I did laundry for the first time since 2016. But I couldn’t make myself go to the store. I’ve been eating canned beans. I can’t wait for you to get home. The bread ran out a while back. Oh, and I’d sure like some yogurt.’

The last plane from Atlanta to Knoxville was one of those little ones that rattled and clapped around and if your car sounded like that you’d trade it in. Mom and I sat next to each other but it was so loud, we had to use the kind of sign language you only know if you’re a mother-daughter team who are super tight. And the wind threw us around and then we were there.

It took so long to fly over all that ocean and all that land, I had gobs of time to think about this whole adventure we had together. This journey that freed me from the yoke of visceral, emotional pain I’ve carried for the last few years. I really wish Dad had lived long enough to make this trip. And I am happy that Mom still did the trip even though he’s gone. And so grateful she brought us in his place. This was exactly what I never knew I always wanted. It loosened the choke hold on my soul, and breathing was like a brand new thing. I stood taller in my skin and now my body fit me better somehow. It reintroduced me to myself, and I liked what I saw.

And our family drew into each other. Closer than I imagined we could be.

Mom and Aunt Janet and Aunt Terrye and me. We’ll be Jolly Friends, Forevermore.

I should get us some of those necklaces for Christmas that have the hearts cracked down the middle.

Where one side says Best and the other says Friends.