Going Back, part 2

The plan for returning was that the kids would fly by themselves from Madrid to Newark, where Mike’s parents would pick them up and, a few days later, meet up with my friend Charlotte, who would drive them to camp in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Mike and I would supervise the packing up of the house and then take a couple weeks to travel through Eastern Europe before flying home. The plan was to fly to Prague, take a train to Vienna and then to Budapest, and fly to New York from there.

As for getting the kids through the airport, there was the problem of the police checkpoint. When you approached the gates in Barajas airport, there was a booth you could go past only if you had a boarding pass. I knew someone who had sent a kid home, though, who had managed to talk her way to the gate by saying that the kid was a minor and needed her help, so I planned to do the same.

But when I got to the police booth, the cop shook his head. I was as forceful as I could be, but he wasn’t going to let me through that checkpoint. The kids were already on the other side. I looked at them in panic, and panic looked back at me. “Just find the gate number! The signs are up above!” I said. I watched in despair as they disappeared into the crowd.

Later I learned that Julie freaked out immediately and started crying. A kind English-speaking lady offered to help, and she took the girls to their gate, where they waited, shaken but safe. Their trip home was uneventful, and they found Mike’s parents outside of Customs in Newark.

There was more trauma in store for me. I had been numb with fear when the movers had come to my Stamford home two years before, to take away two of my three piles of belongings—those going to storage and those going in the air shipment to Spain. And even though I was now moving to a place that was known to me, unlike the unknown adventure Spain had been at that time, I was just as numb. This was not fear about the future, as I was going back to a familiar place. But I felt numb with sadness to be leaving Spain, which had been a place of tremendous fun, adventure and challenge for me. And I was numb with sadness at leaving some of the finest friends I could ever have met. Ana was gone already, and I would always be able to see the Gronningsaters easily, as they were returning to New York City. But I still had to take my leave of the Scarritts and the Krugers.

I sat in my tiny, dark TV room near the front door of the house, with the movers and packers swarming all over. It was just a little move, no furniture involved, but the change was so big and so wrenching for me that I was immobilized. By the end of the day the house was picked clean, my Alfa had been sold, Mike’s Mercedes had been turned in. I sadly left the house for the last time and took a taxi to the Hotel Inter-Continental, near Mike’s office.

We had planned to have a farewell dinner that night with our closest friends. It was a scorching Madrid summer day, with temperatures over 100 degrees. But in the evening, as the sun started to set well after 9, it began to cool down.

We met the Scarritts, Krugers, Liepmanns and Gronningsaters for dinner on the outside patio of a restaurant. The gentle breeze of the evening cooled us, well turned out for our evening, the women in long sleeveless dresses, the men in polo shirts. It was one of those great Spanish evenings out of time—no rush, no reason to go anywhere or do anything but just be there, enjoying the people, the food, the wine. One of the omnipresent street signs blinked the time and temperature from the sidewalk, but only the temperature got my notice as the air cooled—30 degrees Celsius, 29, 28. We had our favorite dishes—lomo and chorizo, Manchego cheese and jamón, piquillos rellenos, boquerones. I relaxed and soaked up those last few hours with my dear friends, sometimes working to banish the thought of leaving in the morning. The night stretched on and on, full of the joy of being there.