Snowdrop wakes at 5:30 a.m. Detroit time, which is 4:30 a.m. Madison time and 11:30 a.m. Paris time. And poof! Our time at the Detroit airport hotel is over. But I am grateful: the airline effectively bought us a night of decent sleep. Short -- just a handful of hours -- but luxuriously decent. (Though I have to laugh at my request for a room with a runway view! No plane is taking off now. And in any case, it's still dark when we zip up our bags and leave the hotel.)
I'm impressed by how busy the airport is at 6 in the morning. So many early risers, wanting to get... somewhere. We have to go through check-in once again and security as well, but then we are free to enjoy our last fragment of our travel adventure.
We start off with a visit to Starbucks. Her choice. She wants some cake pop thing that I have never heard of and no, they don't have it, but she is for once hungry and we stock up on stuff and find a quiet spot to eat and read.
We are moving into the next to last Penderwick novel and everything about this last hour in Detroit feels familiar and homeward bound. Perhaps not surprisingly, her appetite surges once again. Since her bout with the bug, she has been high on energy but low on appetite. Even a Paris croissants got only tentative nibbles. But Starbucks pound cake, scone, bagel -- suddenly she wants them all!
You could say that when it rains, it keeps on raining, because as we complete the plane boarding, we get the announcement that there is a problem with a door light. All these years and I have never heard of a door light problem and here we are, second day in a row with just this mechanical failure. So we wait. And wait once again.
We take off eventually and by 10 a.m. (happily only with an hour's delay) we are in Madison. Her dad is at the airport and our travel adventure ends.
The amount of responsibility I feel traveling alone with her is huge. And so when she reenters the fold of her own family life again, I smile, allowing myself that happiness that comes from knowing you dodged all obstacles and managed the flooded roads and falling rocks and came out at the other end with nothing but stories under your belt. No great drama (police visit in Athens notwithstanding), nothing that we could not handle.
And now I turn my attention toward home, where Ed has been giving me reports of bizarre weather patterns and just last night, of the burst of flower life in the farmette fields. Indeed, it's the first thing that I notice when I pull into the driveway: crocuses!
The morning is brutal in terms of my to do list. First and foremost I have to attend to the card replacement: all subscriptions and payments had been stopped once I stopped my credit card. Eventually I will need to get my driver's license. Then, too, there are the groceries, the tidying, the laundry -- are you bored yet??
Snowdrop did not go to school today and her parents both have work commitments so they drop her off at the farmhouse after lunch and now she and I are not in Athens, not in Paris, but here, with our usual farmhouse routines, except we're running on too little sleep so you might say we are moving slowly but gainfully through the hours of an April afternoon.
And in the evening I finally get to quiz my Chicago big girl, Primrose, about her birthday celebrations!
(recalling a particular birthday present...)
Yes, quite suddenly, I feel I am home. All the good elements are with me again.
Am I tired yet? Oh yeah. But I'm not thinking about that right now. Tomorrow I plunge into the spring yard preparation, weather permitting. I have only three weeks to get it all done this year. And it will get done. The certainties of life: taxes (yikes!) and spring yard work. April bookmarks. Waiting for me, here at home, along with all those chicks, cats and of course, Ed.
with so much love...
