At Home, part 12

Mike had a business trip to Germany just before our departure, so we agreed to meet in London and fly to the U.S. from there. I took the girls to England a day and a half early, hoping to give them a little taste of London before leaving. We stayed at the same bed-and-breakfast place that Mike and I had used that fall.

With so little time, I went for the highlights. We saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace—or perhaps just I saw it, as the kids were too little to see through the crowd. We went to the Tower of London, where the history went over the girls’ heads, but the crown jewels made quite an impression. “Let’s do it again!” Julie said after we completed the slow moving-sidewalk viewing of the jewels.

“What do you think this is, a carnival ride?” I asked, laughing, and we got back in line to do it again.

We had a fast-food dinner and went to a movie that night, and I was horrified by the prices. “It would be one thing if these prices were in dollars,” I fumed to the girls. “Seventeen dollars for a McDonald’s dinner for the three of us, okay. But seventeen pounds? That’s like $26! And the movie—twenty dollars for the three of us, okay, but twenty pounds?” Julie and Lisa let me rage but enjoyed the evening in spite of it.

Then there was the foray to Madame Tussaud’s. A good place for kids, I thought. And they both seemed to enjoy the likenesses of historical figures and celebrities on the main floor.

But when we started down the stairs to the section of murderers and monsters—well, the effects they’d mustered to create a scary atmosphere worked on Lisa in a big way. It was dark, there were ghostly noises and screams on the sound system, and she started crying immediately. “I don’t want to go,” she sobbed, clutching my leg.

“Honey, it’s not real, it’s just for fun,” I said. “I’ll hold your hand the whole time. I promise you’ll be okay.”

“No,” she said, even more terrified, “I can’t go in there!”

An alert guard immediately opened an exit for us. “Go along this way,” she said kindly, indicating a well-lit white-tiled hall. Lisa shot through the door, yanking my arm, and Julie slunk along behind me.

Now the noise started up on her end. “That’s no fair!” she said. “I really wanted to see that part! It looked so cool! Can’t I go by myself?”

I thought about it for a minute, but I was too afraid to let my ten-year-old do that alone. “No, I’m sorry,” I said. “We have to stay together. Maybe you can come back here another time.” She grumbled the rest of the day, and continued to do so every now and then for the next seven years.

We met Mike as planned at Heathrow. The airport was mobbed with travelers, but we were going business class, so we had a short check-in line and a quiet lounge to wait in. The weather was foggy as usual, but Heathrow supposedly had special equipment that permitted planes to take off and land in fog, since that was the natural state of the island, and we got out on time.

“Look at this, Mom!” Julie said, reading the instructions for the plane’s entertainment system. “Every seat has its own TV! You can choose your movies and watch as many as you want!” For the kids, that made this the best flight ever.

There was a long layover at TWA in New York, waiting for our connecting plane to Chicago, but we finally got there. With the kids, there was no possibility of napping before they got to see Grandma and Grandpa, so we made a quick visit before going to our hotel to crash.

It was a great vacation, with visits to family in Chicago and New Jersey and a stay at a hotel in Stamford so we could all see our friends there as well. I continually checked in with myself: Do I feel like this is home, or Spain? Do I miss the U.S.? Am I unhappy that this is just a short trip? I found that I was happy to be seeing everyone, but eager to return to Spain. And that felt good.

When I got back to Madrid, though, I got a letter from my dad complaining about my behavior while I was visiting. I hadn’t cleared the dates for my trip with them properly; I had told them when I was coming, not asked if I could come. I left the kids with him and Mom to go out shopping without asking properly about that. And I had failed to write a thank-you note for a book of photos he’d put together for me.

I was stunned. My dad was always such a big supporter of mine—I’d never been called on the carpet this way by him. I wanted to explain and defend everything I’d done—I hadn’t been perfect, certainly, but my intentions had been good. And yes, I had forgotten to write that note, because the photo book had arrived literally as I was checking out of my Stamford hotel to go to the airport for our return to Spain.

Amy Levine listened to me go on and on about this injustice, and she always offered sympathy and understanding. “I’ve got some issues like that with my mom,” she said, and she told me about her mother’s stubbornness regarding Amy’s sister’s ill health, the unwillingness of those two women to deal with a difficult situation. Amy gave me lots of telephone time and spent many lunches after Everett’s class sharing hurt feelings.

It was Betsy Pardo, the Scout leader who’d said that the first trip home makes it clear that the new country is home now, who dispensed a little wisdom about this situation as well. “It’s not uncommon for a big misunderstanding to happen after that first visit back,” she said. “I’ve seen it a thousand times. People are jealous, or people feel abandoned, or they just feel you’ve gone too far away from them and they try to pull you back.”

I was amazed to hear that this was some kind of phenomenon, because it felt so personal to me, but Betsy’s words helped. “Do these feelings simmer down after a while?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said with a smile. “They’ve got to.”