A Look on the Lighter Side: Bon voyage for some bold journeys

Judy Epstein

It wasn’t until we’d returned from the airport that I could unwind: my son’s plane had left on schedule, taking him on a months-long international trip, after a whirlwind week of getting him clothes; shoes; passport; medicines; tickets.

So when he finally called to say he’d landed safely, at last I relaxed.

I surprised myself, feeling just a little sympathy for the folks in the White House.

Like them, I had finally gotten someone packed and out the door on an international voyage.

Last year when this child went away, I announced my Month of Saying Yes.

This year’s trip, however, will last most of the summer. There’s no way I can say “Yes” to anything for that long, not even coffee!

I’ll just have to distract myself some other way.

Here is where the President might actually help. I am confident there will not be one dull moment, once he’s back in the country.

You know how one year of a dog’s life is supposedly equivalent to seven of ours? I’m trying to work out just what the factor should be for “Trump Days” versus my own.

In “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” Mr. Spock tells Captain Kirk “The hours shall be as days.”

In the movie, it’s code for how long some repairs will take.

But with Trump in the news cycle, some days actually feel 24-days long.

Or maybe it’s better described by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen: “a day in the White House is like a week on LSD.”  (I’m taking his word about the LSD.)

In the photos we took at the airport I am smiling, but only slightly.

I do not want my son to see my worry — or my glee over one tiny success.

For some reason, he and I spent all morning arguing about the shoulder strap of the duffel bag he was checking as luggage.

“Why don’t you let me unclip that, and stow it in the bag.”

“It’s just a stupid strap, Mom!”

“Yes, a strap that could snag on a million things, between now and whenever you see it again.  If you ever do see it again!”

I had visions of his bag being pulled off a conveyor belt, dumped into oblivion, left rotting in some third-world airport — all because he was too proud to take his mother’s advice.

“Judy,” my husband warns me.  “Don’t make too big a deal about this, or you’ll be sorry.  Remember the poncho.”

“What poncho?”

“You know — the rain poncho you insisted his brother take to camp?”

“Oh. Yes. That one.”  I was so worried about my eldest’s first summer away that I gave him everything I could think of, including a Disneyworld poncho. He insisted he didn’t need it, didn’t want it, and kept taking it out.  But at the last minute, when he wasn’t looking, I hurriedly smushed it into the very bottom of his bag.

On visiting day, our son proudly informed us that that poncho was the very first thing he threw out.  Naturally, it was the rainiest summer in camp memory; but to this day, he insists: No regrets.

So I was more subtle with this second boy.  Finally — just as some very cute girls walked up  — he gave in, and let me stow the strap. Victory!

Now, at last, I was back home, and could put the house back together. Which was necessary, since there had been a few chaotic episodes, packing.

For instance: Why is it you can never find band-aids when you want them, at two in the morning?

Why did we finally find the voltage converter, not in the travel-things-drawer, or even in the electronic-things-I-don’t-understand drawer, but in a kitchen cabinet, with the raisins?

And why, after I completely emptied two front-hall-closets of ski hats, gloves, cameras and duct tape, strewing everything everywhere in my frantic search for the hand-held luggage scale— why did the thing finally turn up in an upstairs dresser drawer?  With hand towels?

Now, besides everything else, I must put all the towels back.

The worst of it is, even though that made absolutely no sense, and the scale is now where you’d  expect to find it (the electronic things drawer, of course)— I will probably keep looking for it with the hand towels till the end of my days.

Ah well. Life in a domestic scavenger hunt is not the worst fate I can imagine.

At least I’m not working in the Trump White House.

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