Grounded.

Darling readers (that may be overly optimistic… Hi Mom and Zac I love you both),

            My trip has come to a screeching halt. Picture this:

I’m sitting on the bus, writing my blog entry that was posted merely an hour before when I come to the realization that I do not have the folder with all of my travel documents inside of it. Shock. Horror. But I keep it cool because the girl sitting next to me dons wearing a U Chicago sweatshirt and is reading a court briefing. Calmly, I pick up my phone and pointed it at the ground. Nothing. I turned the flashlight on. Something. I look around on the ground to no avail. The kind driver man had not put it underneath the bus with my backpack because I had it out to give my ticket to the man. I take a deep breath and turned to U Chicago: “Have you seen a yellow folder?” Response: “No.” Damn, she was cool. Not in the overhead bin, either. By some stroke  of God (it’s act of God but this was more of a gentle nudge) a man went into the overhead bin above me to retrieve pretzels from the bus stash, and out falls my yellow folder. However, my passport is not inside of it.

I don’t have my passport.  I still don’t have my passport and it’s 3 hours later. This is very bad. I now know what it’s like to be a mother at an amusement park looking for my child. I yelled its name a few times but the kid had certainly slipped the leash. My mother called the Dartmouth Coach while I sprinted the halls of the bus, and indeed, the passport was two and a half hours away at the bus station in Lebanon, NH.

Now at Logan airport, I ran to Lufthansa (my airline) to see what I should do. After all, I had a printed copies of my passport and visa page just in case this happened. No dice. I ran to the ticket office. “We can’t refund your ticket. You got it through a travel agency that looks shifty.” For the record, Student Travel Association is not a shifty name. Lufthansa, however, sounds like an airborne disease. From there I went on a goose chase to customs, back to the ticketing office, to the boarding desk, and then finally settled in on a public chair to talk to my mom.

Thanks to my phenomenal, endlessly forgiving, brilliant, kind mother, I’m going to be arriving in Florence, though a day after everyone else. And that is okay. I have sauntered past rage, disappointment, and sadness and moved into quiet submission that is, finally, gratefulness.  In order to get this passport and ticket my brother drove two and a half hours to come deliver my passport to me, and will be doing the same drive after its delivery it to get back home. My mom jumped through a lot of hoops to get to talk to the same travel agent she booked a flight with, got me an Uber account, and spent money that I so wish she didn’t have to.  In addition, one of my close friends from home offered up his Boston home for the night, and I had the ear of a wonderful boy to listen to a mini tantrum. I’m not going to be getting to Florence when I thought I would, but I will get there. There's a big snowstorm tomorrow, so I'm going to try to get into the air as quickly as possible. Tonight, I’m spending the night in Logan airport, and tomorrow I’m going to be sleeping in London (hello old friend!) before finally flying to Italy that following morning.

My guardian angel for organization and groundedness clearly never made it past inspection when I was born, but somehow I was granted an incredible variety of people in my life to try to make things okay when I need help. It’s okay to reach out, it’s okay to trust in others. 

When Jerry Seinfeld goes onstage to do his stand-up he has a little trick: He gives himself an “impossible task” to get past before he starts his set. Whether it’s picking up his microphone in just the right way, making the step onto a stair in just the perfect manner, whatever before he gets going. As this adventure to Italy has begun, I dropped the microphone and tripped up the step, but that doesn’t mean the set is over. I’ve got this and I’m starting to feel good again. May this be the worst of my problems.

Home for the night

And… I LOVE YOU MOM!