Island Life and First Graders

Day 1

Knoxville to Atlanta:

The mud smeared around. I tried some more to wipe it from the air vent on the plane with my little disinfectant wipe. More mud. Nasty-germy-mess. No touching. I watched some germ-ball kid squeal, pull his hand out of his mouth, turn his air vent with slimy fingers, and put his hand right back in his mouth. He’ll be sick by tomorrow. So will the poor guy who sits there next.

I stared out the window at the intense, thick green trees on the Smoky Mountains while the cabin attendant prattled on about the meds her grandma was taking and yes, she’s this talkative to strangers in the grocery store. I silently picked one island after another, out of the blue dots down below, for my next residence.

That one is quiet and mysterious. I’d live there. Or wait, that one has no docks nearby, I’ll take that one. But the one over there has more acreage of good forest…

Mom concentrated on complicated versions of Sudoku and Aunt Jan knitted and Aunt Terrye read and I meticulously planned my future residence and the attendant prattled on and we were all very happy.

Atlanta to Amsterdam:

The tops of the clouds were bubbly and fragile, sometimes giving a hint of land below, but then the sun went down all the way below the ground and we flew a hundred million miles away from it. So fast-fast-fast that it was rising again before we even got a nap. There it was, showing me bubbly fragile clouds. So far from the first but about the same, really, with a hint of land below.

Mom lost her cord to charge her tablet while she was sitting in her seat. She rummaged and moved all her items from here to there. Got down on hands and knees. Flashlight on cell phone, folding and unfolding and refolding the little blue blankets and pillows they give you for the international flights. The kind that aren’t awesome but you’re grateful the airlines give you anything these days other than a swift kick in the teeth.

I watched three movies. The aunts pretended to sleep across the way. Mom rummaged. We were all very busy.

Amsterdam to Stockholm:

One and a half hour flight of solid, much needed sleep. No one pretended on that one.

They kidnapped Aunt Jan, once we got there, and told her to go somewhere else, so we lost her for about 20 minutes. I guess the giant red sticker identifying her as part of our group wasn’t the eye attractor it pretended to be. My mom pointed at some Swedish graffiti. Couldn’t read it even if it was English, she said. Looks about the same regardless of language. They piled us on a bus and then we were magically there.

A huge boat. With bustling activity. Attentive people whose jobs were to smile at us a lot, and make us feel cared for. And they were very good at their jobs. We explored our rooms, unpacked a little of this and a little of that, ate some little somethings, slept through the boat’s presentation of the same material they’d already given us. I watched everyone’s eyes glaze over and my two sweet aunt’s heads bob along with my mom’s as they fought sleep. Like first graders.

We wandered through this huge boat back to our rooms. Ready to give up for the night.
Maybe this is how big the Titanic was, Mom said.

But maybe this is bigger.