A Year at Home

John is not a fan of flying. And--after our first flight with Louis in China--I started dreading our flight home. A few times we laughed about renting a car in Guangzhou and just driving home.

It was a joke. Really.


Then, after more than 24 hours in transit, we landed in Chicago, went through immigration, and hurried to catch our last flight.

It was canceled. So was every flight to the East Coast. The lines of people who needed flights home were insanely long. We had no cell phone, no ATM card, $22 in American cash, about five combined hours of sleep, and had just said goodbye to the only friends we knew in Chicago.

We took plenty of pictures, but none at that airport. Not of John throwing his hands up in despair and heading to the nearest McDonald's stand--because what else could we do. Not of me making a collect call home to find out that this was not some temporary delay. Not of the lines of people, or the snow on the ground in Chicago, or John huddling in a corner with Louis and our luggage, trying to keep our tired toddler warm. Bleary-eyed as I was, I can still picture it all vividly. The only photo I wish I had was one of us when we miraculously ran into our close friends who had shared the journey with us on their trip to their daughter and our trip to our son.

Our friends Scott and Cherie--who live outside Chicago--had slept less on the flight than we had. They had their two children and Cherie's parents with them. And they had a 45-minute drive ahead of them. But they dropped everything to try to help us get a flight home--and when that didn't work--figured out how to get us to a hotel in a city that was over-run with travelers like us. In the midst of everything, Cherie's mom handed me a lovely panda necklace and smiled as she told me--a weary, un-showered new mother who could barely form a sentence--how wonderful it was to meet me.

When we got to the hotel that night, we realized that getting a flight home in time for Christmas was unlikely. John was expected at work that Monday. Louis had a doctor's appointment. And we just plain wanted to get home.

"We're renting a car," John said. Absurd as it seemed at first, it quickly emerged as our best choice. When my clear-thinking, well-rested parents agreed that it was a sensible decision, I called and reserved a car and a car seat.

Louis had never been in a car seat. We were all completely jet-lagged. But all we wanted was to get home.

We took it slowly. John installed the car seat. Louis cried when he first sat in it, and then he settled down and chattered on and on about everything he saw outside.

We stopped at rest stops.

 

We ate when Louis was hungry, finding noodles and fruit along the way.

 

Louis tried his first cheeseburger.

 

We laughed and sang and played Peek-a-boo as loudly as we liked.

And Louis caught up on the sleep he'd missed on the plane.

We weren't home, but we were on our way.



And we had plenty of Cheerios.


And we knew how to use them.


Most important, we were a family, together with the people who mattered most to us in the world. It turned out to be the best--and most memorable--part of our journey home.

The first night we stayed near Pittsburgh. In my memories Louis didn't sleep at all at the hotels--he was so thrown-off, poor little guy--but here is a photo proving that he did in fact close his eyes.

 

The second day--Dec. 21--we pulled up outside my parents' house.

Since they were supposedly picking us up from the airport, they had the key to our house. We visited briefly and Louis met them and his Aunts Shai and Treasa.

He tried his hand at the piano.

He played with Baba.

Then we headed home.

By the time we got there, Louis had fallen asleep. It was just another stop for him on a long journey. We had no way of telling him that this was our final stop, that this wasn't one more hotel, one more temporary space for us on our way to the next stop.

Still, when he woke up on my lap and looked around the room, he recognized this as a place he would enjoy.

There were balloons.

 

There were chairs that were just his size.

Louis quickly made himself at home, and over the past year "Louis House" has become his favorite place. When we leave, he wants to know when we will come back. When I pick him up in the afternoon, he asks for Baba and "Louis House" in the same breath.

Tonight as I watched him play with the trains around our Christmas tree, I thought of that first night home.



That night at bedtime, Louis was obviously worried that the toys and books and fun wouldn't still be there the next morning, or that we would hurry him off on another day-long car trip.

Tonight he wasn't concerned. He knows the trains will still be here in the morning.


Sure, he stalls a bit at bedtime. What toddler doesn't? He wants another drink. He wants to wear his blue "thneed" instead of the red one. He can't decide which three books to carry upstairs.



We love that Louis loves his house, a home we spent so long preparing for him--long before we saw a photo of our little boy in China.

Still, as I watched him turn a teddy bear into a train tunnel tonight, I thought yet again of how Louis has turned this house into a home.

It may have taken us a bit longer to get here than we might have expected, but here we are. Finally home--and look how our year has flown by.