|
Go back to Articles Page
My father died in February of 2007, and I dragged my entire family with me from the Green Bay airport to the Philadelphia airport, then drove the two-hour trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I was sicker than anything, with a cold that wouldn't quit. It was nasty, and even the kennel lady said she'd had it for six weeks and couldn't shake the thing. So here I was, flying with a headcold, on a puddle jumper, where our seats were the entire row in the farthest back of the plane where there's no air. I was sitting with Emily, and she was wired. Now, Emily has something close to hypoglycemia, I swear. She's never been diagnosed with it, but she gets wired on sugar, caffeine and anything else remotely resembling either of those things. I think she'd had a donut and a soft drink that early morning. I'm not sure what my husband bought her at the vending machines in the airport, but she was hilarious. We sat in our seats in the back, and Emily wanted the aisle seat. She didn't trust the window seat, and with our youngest daughter crying from fear of flying (you'd think they'd 'get' the flying thing as much as we've flown with these kids), Emily thought she'd turn her attention to something else. She was 12 at the time, and since I was sick, she was going to be the entertainment. A man with an Ipod sat down in the seat in front of the rest of the family, which was beside us. Emily looked over to me, then to the man, then back at me. "Mom," she whispered. "That guy was in the terminal with us." My eyes were closed and, as badly as I felt with the head cold, I just wished I could die. "Yep. Makes sense." "But Mom, I think he's stalking us." "I doubt it." I looked up and the man was totally ignoring us. "But Mom, he's a..." And she began to sing a song from some show on television. "Spy-guy..." loudly enough for everyone near us to hear. I started to laugh. Only my kids would take a scary situation, in their minds, and make it funny. The plane took off, and since it was winter, there was some turbulance, because over the Great Lakes, there were many clouds. This didn't faze Emily. She made up stories about Spy Guy and sang the song to me over and over again. By the time we landed in Detroit for our layover, I just wanted the guy to disappear so I could get some sleep. We caught our connecting flight, and wouldn't you know it, 'spy guy' was on the plane with us, talking on his cellphone. Of course, Emily wanted to sit beside me, and kept an eye on 'spy guy', about ten rows ahead of us. When we finally landed in Philadelphia, 'spy guy', who was still ignoring us and on his cell phone again, stood near us at the luggage return area. Of course, by now, Emily couldn't stop laughing...or singing. Don't you wish you had a zest for life, where little things like that made your day? That's Emily. The funeral wasn't that bad, after all, even though I was as sick as could be. I spread the sickness around to the rest of my family, and when we came back home, we were stranded in the Detroit airport for six hours. It was the best six hours we've spent as a family in a long time. If you want to get stranded, the Detroit airport is the place to be. They have an underground passage, or tunnel, that has lights on the walls. The lights play to music, and if you ride the moving floor the entire distance, it's just fun. They also have a shuttle that takes you from one end of the terminal to the other. That was a fun diversion. At one point, this woman got on who was more fun than we were. She was playing like she was driving the thing, trying to wreck it. Her husband was not amused, and asked if she needed more medications. We all laughed. The point of this whole story is, like Emily, when faced with a bad situation, make something fun out of it. That's what we did, and even though we've been to fun places, our children will always remember the trip to Grandpa's funeral...going and coming back. |
|
|
|
Copyright © 2007 Webwyze All rights reserved. |