Well that was an interesting morning! Perhaps not for you, reading this and maybe not even for me in retrospect, but let me tell you, for 15 minutes I felt like the daredevil that walks, no, runs across a tightrope between two skyscrapers.
It's our travel day. I wake up at 5:25. As usual -- five minutes before my alarm is set to go off. Snowdrop sleeps, I finish packing, take my shower, double check everything. One suitcase, with clean stuff. One bag with dirty stuff. One bag tucked in with treats for the brothers. Another -- treats for the girl's friends and cousins. All carefully organized so that Snowdrop's parents don't have to do the work of figuring out what's what.
By 6:20 we are riding the elevator down to the lobby.
Good bye, Reykjavik. You've been wonderful.
And so we cab back to the airport. Past a landscape of lupines and lava rock. (The lupines were brought it to control erosion. They love the rocky ground here!) Past the waters of the North Atlantic. Past houses with colorful metal siding. Iceland is indeed beautiful.
The airport isn't enormous, and the lines aren't long. Except when they're very long. We slog through it all. Passing through security, my knee, as usual, sets off all alarms, so I have to have a pat down -- which takes them forever. Each airport security team has its protocols. At Reykjavik, people with metal in them (me!) have to remove their shoes before the screening and have them pass a special examination. Why? I do not know. But it messes with the bag retrieval. You are in one place, your child is in another, the shoes are in yet a third and everything happens out of sequence. Well, so it be. We claim our stuff, we walk to the gate. Which is far. We pass shops. She buys chocolate for her friends. We pass passport control. In most airports, passport control comes first, then comes security. Not here. And we pass a Sbarro's. It's 8 in the morning but the girl is hungry. Can I have a slice of pizza? Sure, why not. I take out my boarding pass, my wallet to pay for it, and then I hear the announcement -- would passenger Nina Camic please report to security?
Holy Hannah, what did I do???
Snowdrop is a trooper. Go, I'll wait here.
Anyone could have told you this is not a great idea. Leave a little girl alone at a busy airport while you retrace your steps, in reverse, through passport control, back into Iceland, past dozens of shops, down escalators and long corridors? The flight takes off in about an hour and on international flight boarding starts early. I have no idea why they're paging me, but clearly I left something behind. Something easily identifiable as mine. I best head back for it.
I run. I brisk-walk. I run some more. I weave my way past lines -- excuse me, I'm being paged, I left a child behind, I'm in a hurry. People are sympathetic if extremely puzzled. The passport control agent is less sympathetic. You left a child? How old is she? Ten. Did you leave her under someone's care? Well, hopefully she is eating a pizza slice. He shakes his head and stamps my passport yet again.
At security, I flag a guard -- I was paged. I think I left something behind. What? -- he asks. I don't know! He looks at me. It's fair to sway that I look frazzled. Maybe a laptop? - he prompts me. Yes! Maybe that! What kind? I don't know! His stare is unrelenting. I mean, it could be purple, hers, or it could be silver, mine.
In the end it was mine. Forgotten in the jumble of mixed up items and bins and backpacks. Relieved, I retrace my steps. It's a 15 minute walk. Excuse me, can I get ahead of the line, you see, I have a young child... The passport agent -- a different one of course -- shakes his head, stamps me yet again and I run back to Sbarro's where a very anxious Snowdrop is waiting for me. At least you had your pizza -- I try to cheer her. He wouldn't give it to me! You hadn't paid for it! I glare at him even though I know it's not his fault. He shrugs. Rules are rules.
She eats her pizza on her lap in the crowded bus that takes us to the airplane.
And 6.5 hours later, we are in Minneapolis.
It's a pretty short layover. The girl would love a plate of french fries -- it's been a long time since that pizza slice -- but my need for a coffee is even greater. And after that, we do a speed walk to the other side of this convoluted airport and immediately board our flight to Madison. And 32 minutes later we are at the airport. The girl has taken on the job of retrieving our bags.
Minutes later she hops in her dad's car and is off to her Shakespeare Players group where friends await her, followed by a Girl Scout meeting where other friends await her. After two weeks with her grandmother, Snowdrop is especially in need of time with friends. Even though she is on a Europe clock, she is raring to go. I smile at her level of energy. I can't say I am able to match it, and yet we were nearly always in sync in our travels together.
Ed is waiting for me. Usually, there's no report of any happenings. The guy leads a quiet life! But, the weather has thrown a real punch in the last 24 hours: in one day we had had four inches of rain. The downpour was so strong that the roof of a supermarket collapsed, causing a Niagra Falls-like flood in the aisles. (No one was hurt, which in itself was amazing.)
I no longer can talk about a drought here, or any kind of dry spell. We will continue to have rain this week. You have to wonder which is better -- too little rain or too much? I will report on that tomorrow, when I survey the damage, if such there be.
In the meantime, I am home. With Ed. So very very happy that the trip went well, especially for Snowdrop. We had no disconcerting snafus (well, she'd claim the room changes were a disconcerting snafu). We heard at the Reykjavik airport that yesterday's flight to Minneapolis had been cancelled due to plane troubles. Rebooking all those passengers, given the totally full flights from Iceland must have been a nightmare. But none of this affected us. The weather was fabulous throughout, within its own regional vicissitudes. Importantly, neither of us got really sick. A sniffle here, an upset tummy there, an sore toe or two... And now we are home, ready to face... summer!
with so much love...