I'll Be Home For Christmas?

December 19-23, 2009

Christmas vacation 2009 started with a Saturday flight to Paris, even though I knew my flight from there to D.C. was cancelled, freak storms on both sides of the Atlantic had left thousands of travelers stranded in major cities across Europe and the U.S. The airplane gods sent me to Paris anyway, told me, "AirFrance would figure it out there!" The solution they would finally “figure out” was to send me on an 8:30 pm flight back to Milan to catch a flight leaving for the States the next morning.

“This be Italy.” Robert said in a text message and all I could do was nod my head in agreement.

After my little “daytrip” to Paris, I was so close to kissing the luggage recovery guy when he found my suitcase sitting in the small back room of lost luggage that he literally started laughing out loud at my joy, something I don’t think he had done much of that day. It took recovered luggage for me to gain a little perspective and realize the whole ordeal probably wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it was. Little did I know night number two would be spent in Atlanta, as my parents drove to JFK to pick me up.

It was only noon on the 3^rd day, when I properly screamed “UNCLE!” and decided not to reschedule my cancelled flight to Syracuse and instead grabbed a cab to Justin’s house in Arlington. Deciding to wait for he and his Mercedes Benz to drive my pink and black luggage and me to Greene, New York, whenever that was.

It is easy to get philosophical and feeling sorry for yourself on a journey like that. So I searched for the lessons.

I felt sorry for myself, because I can’t remember feeling more homesick than I was on December 19^th. I longed for the barren land of Cincinnatus lake and the hills that surrounded it. I wanted my Mom, who would scream when I arrived and fix coffee at 6 a.m. in the hopes I was jetlagged and up ready to talk. I wanted my Dad to peer over the paper and smile. I longed for Spence who would pretend he didn’t notice I was home only to slyly look at me with the sheepish grin when he thought I wasn’t looking; Cooper who would immediately take my hair out of my ponytail, tell me, “Yes, that is much better!” only to sigh and say he missed me, his cheek smushed against mine. I wanted to sit with my uncle and have him say, “It would be ok, life. In fact, I wanted him to say it would be better than ok, that it would be sublime.” Though I am not sure he ever uses that word, sublime. I wanted to be able to hug Heather and tell her that though I was what seemed like millions of miles away, I was there in her heart and mind all the time. I wanted my sister to just be my sister, on my bed, while I talked about the boy I really, really liked as she giggled when I asked the magic 8 ball for the answers to life.

I suppose I am not alone in longing for home, in the middle of huge life decisions and I am in the middle of a major life decision. On December 4^th, I decided I would not be returning to ASM next year. Friday, December 4^th, 8:15 am, the decision was made. My eyes finally dry after a week of psychotic crying including a break down in my principal’s office as he told me he hoped I would stay.

‘I am just taking a left, just a left, choosing a different road, a different direction.’ I kept thinking.

“What am I thinking!? There is a recession; you have a job in Milan, in Italy. Italy! Milan! The last three years of your life, have been the best three years of your life. You don’t even know what you want. Do you?”

Always conversations. In my head, sometimes they come in dialogue between head and heart. Other times the voices enter as the dreamer and the responsible realist. Regardless of the cameo, the characters have my voice, one calculating the other frantic.

“I want everything.” The daydreamer stated steadily. “Everything! Why not just search for it? It isn’t here. You know it isn’t here, so you can’t stay.”

Rattled by the calmness, the realist countered with a high pitched nasally tone, “But HERE is as perfect as it has been ever. I am happier than I have ever been. How can I expect it can be better than this?”

The response: no words now, just laughter, sarcastic laughter. If there were words they would form to say something like ‘settling’ adding a rhetorical question asking how settling had worked out for me in the past? Ending with, “Take a risk, just leap!” But that pep talk has become cliché and the laughter is there to remind me the old Rebecca lurks in the corner.

So, instead of being scared, I walked into Dr. Austen’s office at 10 am and I thanked him for the last three years. Honestly hoping he realized how absolutely grateful I am for the opportunity he gave me. And because he took a chance on me, I was able to live the life I had only dreamed of prior to this. I told him I could still see Elizabeth’s face staring at me, as this cerebral beacon of hope. No, I didn’t say cerebral beacon of hope, I know it is too dramatic to be said (even if it is true). The fact that I got to work for her undoubtedly made me a better teacher and person. He listened, was kind, and said all the things you would hope your head of schools would say. I stood up, shook his hand, walked out the door, my life changing with each stride.

Home for the holidays was an important first step. Breathing in and out was another. Home would fill me up so I could decide a path.

But getting home was turning out to be harder than I thought. Justin rescued me from the never-ending flights and cancellations. I landed at Reagan National Airport headed to the taxi stand with J’s house address in hand and breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Small talk, I love small talk.” I thought as I leaned back onto the stiff leather seat and learned the life story of my driver, he liked me too, “Don’t head out today these road aren’t good, young lady. You get in that house and stay there.” He said with a smile.

“With pleasure!”

I immediately showered, put on my sweats and a t-shirt and begged my body to sleep, I had slept 8 hours over the course of three days and my body was nauseated with exhaustion. I lay down happy to finally feel my muscles relax into the brown fleece blanket on Justin’s bed. My muscles calmed but my brain whirled with excitement. There was no way I could sleep.

J walked through the door after lunch without telling me he was leaving work early, I found myself smiling and screaming like my mom would have, as I watched him loosen his tie and I wrapped my arms around him.

“I have missed you so much.” I found myself saying as his hands went around my waist and my face nestled into his neck, the nervous habit of becoming shy when too much time has passed.

“I missed you too.” his face moving to meet my lips. The two days in D.C. were filled with sleep, J’s microeconomics exam and take out pizza.

My delay was not only bad for my sleep, it also meant I would not see my nephews until Christmas day. Resisting the urge to say, “I hate fucking divorce.” I listened as my sister offered a solution. She had checked with their teachers and we could come to school and participate in their Christmas class parties. So, at five a.m. on Wednesday, I was up, using the wiliest of ways to get Justin up and moving, in order to make it back in time.

The sun was shining the traffic was light as I sat for my first road trip with Justin. We, of course, had ridden trains along the coast in Cinque Terre, flown across the Atlantic from Milan but this was the first time driving long distance in a car.

“So, are there any rules I should know of?” I said with a smile. “How do you feel about bathroom breaks? Is singing allowed?”

His answers amiable and sweet, “of course” to singing and “you are only wasting ‘Christmas party time’ with Spencer and Cooper if you need to pee”. The journey began.