Grandma got sick about a month before the end of the school year. I am a speech language pathologist in the schools and suddenly, the job I’ve always loved with a passion felt small. I kept feeling this pressure inside of me and the urge to cry. Every bit of me wanted to be with grandma and Matt and I wanted my girls to have their daddy back.
Matt and I were confident in the decision for us to join him and Megan for the summer. Surely this wouldn’t endure past another 6 weeks. We figured that we would all end up flying home together. Plenty of others thought we were crazy.
From my view today, months since we’ve returned and months into the next school year, I’m so incredibly glad we went. And… yeah, there were some crazy moments.
The first barrier was the process of getting our passports. We had managed to get an emergency “appointment” at the Seattle passport office to get expedited passports for these Covid babies that had never even been on a plane domestically. My passport wasn’t expired but didn’t have my married last name and I didn’t want anyone questioning that my babies were mine so I just figured I’d update mine as well.
The “appointment” ended up meaning that I was allowed to join the line. The line where people from all over the country had also come in order to procure an emergency expedited passport. Everyone had a story in that room and it was full. Apparently there are only two offices in the US where you can do this! I naively put an hour on the parking meter and joined the line where the family in front of me was from California and the guy behind me was from Texas.
6 hours later in a room where no food, no drinks, no bathroom and no phones are allowed (we said IDGAF to this last one) my two toddlers and I were hanging on by a thread. I had a migraine, they were hungry and the baby needed a new diaper again. I ran them to the car and back to have a pee in the car potty and suck a pouch down mid way through. Whhhyyy hadn’t I brought the strolllleeeerrrr?????? I was forcing myself to stay calm and the girls were somehow behaving themselves amazingly. Morgan kept finding this Hawaiian looking man with a big Buddha belly and requesting he allow her to lay on his tummy which he happily obliged. Mya had found a little girl in line to play with and they shifted between playing with their dolls and watching doc mcstuffins.
The short story is that this would be the location of my first breakdown. I stood, tears falling as I recollected my documents into a pile, explaining our situation for the fifth time to the fifth person. I was not going home with passports today. It’s a much longer story but I would end up falling apart at a dear friends who scooped us up and cared for us in every way, driving back home that night, returning on my own the next day to do the line again and then leave again to await their final decision. The biggest issue was if they could accept scanned copies of Matt’s signature on the parental document. A document that Matt had to figure out how to get notarized in a foreign country and then had to figure out how to get scanned at a Portuguese library and back to me. Every step was like a task on the Amazing Race.
I was 20 minutes into the 2.5 hour drive back when they called me and said they were going to allow the documents based on our situation and the doctors statement we had to provide. If I could come back, they would have them printed by the end of the day (for $600… and they were only good for a year unless we filed more paperwork). Yes! I’m on my way.
The tricky obstacle course of travel. I knew this ride well. I had backpacked Europe, I had lived in Asia and traveled all over on busses and trains and hopper planes. I had slept in weird hostels and managed missed flights. I could do this. Yes… a few months prior to this I would get nervous about bringing the girls to the park on my own because a 8 month old and a two year old was no joke but I could do this. I was going to doing it.
Life does not make things easy on us. It’s not the nature of life. I believe that the point of this all (of our life, actually lives that is) is to learn about and actualize love. The more lessons we collect, experiences we live through, people we meet, hardships we endure, the further we deepen our understanding of love and what it means to be human.
In those early days where I was just starting to realize the rich shittyness of our situation I kept thinking about mothers. Mothers who kept mothering while living in a war zone. Mothers who kept wiping their kids buggers and toilet training while in refugee camps. Mothers who kept scrounging up dinner and playing hide and seek after nature took their house by flood or fire. It doesn’t stop. There isn’t a break to deal with life outside of the little ones who still need you to wash their little hands and sing them a song.
These moments require us to love amongst the ugly, within the ruin and around the dark corners of life and because of that, we learn, if we can muster the strength, that love doesn’t require the easy way. That love can actually multiply and expand and overwhelm us in the scenery of struggle.
It’s not a fluffy, romantic love. No one wants to leave their family and work to sit in a hospital room 8 hours a day with their mom in a coma. But the love… the love existing behind such an action is inspiring. It doesn’t feel inspiring… but its core is.
Probably… no one also wants to travel internationally with two toddlers on their own but here we were, passports in hand and leaving to reunite with grandma, dad and auntie.
Finally! Success!
Testing out her travel backpack
Practicing our plan to get around the airports
Updating our Covid vaccination. Did I mention that they both got sick from sitting in the passport sesspool so we had to push our flight by a week?
Can I bring this hat?
I am so proud of you Miesha! You and Matt are showing your daughters what it means to be tough, how to love unconditionally, and to persevere through challenges. Love you, and thank you for sharing your story with us. It’s beautiful, just like you and your sweet family! We are actively keeping you all in our prayers.