Seat 20 E

Airports are like a country themselves.  They have a distinct government, culture, language and economy.  Once inside the network, you’re sheltered from the rest of the world in an artificial bubble of life-limbo known as “transit”.

I don’t mind airports, especially when I don’t have bags to check or toddlers to wrangle.

There is something surreal about surfing the moving magic carpets in a sea of strangers all heading somewhere.  I often lose myself in the sheer wonder of the impossible probability of those particular threads of life in the universe converging in one tiny space for a moment in time.

I wonder not just who people are, or where they’re going, but why, and what their story is.  There is beauty in all of creation, but there seems to be an extra measure in the rainbow of faces that ebb and flow through the airports of the world.  Call me crazy, but I think airports are beautiful in that respect.

I’m strapped into Delta Flight 1600 from Atlanta to Boston.  We’re still at the gate.  The elevator music is playing.  Somehow I’ve been blessed with an entirely empty row and a window to watch the sun rise, for the first time in a while, over the US of A.  In a few short hours I’ll be wishing for a winter coat and remembering how to drive on snow and ice as I skate north to the edge of the mountains in New Hampshire.

What’s worth leaving my precious family and the beautiful blue lago at the top of the world for?

A baby.

No, not mine, thank you very much.  My babies are big enough to give me up for a week to another little one, several actually.

Children of chosen family whose Mama needs a little extra help with three under four and a rough recovery.  Laura Caroline Sonnenwende made her appearance in the early morning of December 21st, in the shadow of the lunar eclipse (hence her German middle name, meaning Solstice).  She’s the first of the Schenk children that has been born without me there to cry a little and rock in the OR while Daddy holds Mama’s hand as the doctor’s do their work.

Missing her birth was hard on me.  I hope she’ll still love me, even though I’m two weeks late.

I’m going to bond with our winter baby, but I’m also going to hug the daylights out of her older two siblings and do mountains of dishes, laundry and schooling so that my dear friend can rest a little, recover, and perhaps even catch up on a little sleep, if such a thing is possible for a new Mama.

I miss my kidlets already.

Hannah e-mailed me this morning to thank me for “all of the things you do that go unnoticed,” and to report that she’s feeling my absence in that capacity already.  And to ask how to grow the sprouts so the chopped salad we live on in Guatemala for fresh greens will be “right.”

Elisha sent his daily, “I love you,” e-mail.  The same one that I wake up to even when I’m sleeping under the same roof.

Tony was up ridiculously early, stalking the internet, waiting for me to turn up on Skype at the airport.  He doesn’t like me to travel alone and we’re rarely more than 500 yards from one another.

The view from the plane window is what I expect to see on the ground in a couple of hours:  White.  The clouds remind me of mounds of soft snow, newly plowed, before it has a chance to turn brown and yucky.

The next few minutes are the calm before the storm.  I’m working hard to be present and rest a little.  I’m missing my family, enjoying the quiet, and am beyond excited to hug the folks that will fill the next week and a half.