A lot of memorable events have transpired in the two months since I have last blogged. One of the biggest was Grace’s first plane ride. She and I took a little mother-daughter trip back to Texas to visit my family, and I am proud to say that she was not one of those screaming babies you dread to encounter on an airplane. (Of course, being proud is wildly inappropriate since I’m pretty sure her good behavior was unrelated to anything in particular that I did.) We had a nonstop flight on the way back home, which was easy peasy lemon squeezy. We did have a stop in Chicago on the way to Texas, which was a trifle more challenging. By the end of the second flight, Grace started to get a little unsettled and antsy. It was far from dreadful, though; I declare our first air travel a success.
We had a lovely time in Texas. We stayed with my parents, who are still head-over-heels for Grace. Shocking, no? She is in a lovely stage of development right now, full of personality and smiles and sociability-- a good stage for cementing grandparents’ devotion. I also got to hang out with a number of friends of ours who are still back in Dallas. Tina came over to my parents’ house to chat for a while, and I hung out with friends from our old small group and their babies. I got to see one set of my grandparents as well, as they were visiting Texas from St. Louis. It was delightful to introduce Grace to them, as she continues her unstoppable conquest of all our family. Throw in a sister and an aunt, and you’ve got yourself a visit full of fun people!
The motivation for this visit back to my old stomping grounds was my 10-year high school reunion. I have been out of high school for an entire decade; isn’t that madness? I graduated from a teeny tiny high school that doesn’t organize official reunions so this was a very casually organized event. I was pleased to see that we found contact info for almost everyone, and about half of our 30-odd classmates were there. It was really fun but kind of surreal to see all these people again. Not so much for the handful of girls that I keep in contact with, but for those who I hadn’t seen since graduation, a definite sense of alternative universe prevailed. You spend every day with these people, then don’t see them for years, and then POW! There they are again, somehow both different and the same as they were back then at once.
When it came time to head back to Texas, I made a rookie mistake trying to catch our flight back to Connecticut. I was running late and ended up missing the cut-off for checking bags (and thus getting on the flight) by one minute. Grrrrr... Traveling with Grace was not horrifying, but everything I tried to do took longer. I was just plain running late, and the particular airline person I was talking to was not in the mood for flexibility or grace. These travelers have to be taught a lesson! she thought. The consequences were not too dreadful; I ended up back home a number of hours later than originally planned. However, the whole rest of that day, I kept thinking, “If only I had eaten breakfast one minute faster... If only I hadn’t hit snooze that one time... If only...”
