Adventure time

Taken and edited by a 7 year old who feels entirely too powerful with a phone in her hands

This past week, the kids and I flew to Phoenix to visit my parents. It was an ambitious undertaking: Linnea’s first ever flight, Corinne’s and my first flight in almost five years, a 6am departure on our way home. We’re all still exhausted but the trip was so very, very worth it.

I’ve been to the Grand Canyon but not any farther south, and the landscape was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was such a stark beauty that I find myself missing even days after returning to the midwest. We spent a morning at the Desert Botanical Garden which, while hot as blazes, was an exceptional chance to see a whole host of cacti. Just hanging out and growing in the ground. The ground!

Agave, organ pipe, pricklepear blooming

I wasn’t the only one enamored. Corinne took picture after picture (until she started wilting dramatically) and remembered all the names and facts to share with Victoria and Joshua later. She’s a sponge and the perfect foil for my father, who has been a tour guide in his past and is himself a repository of knowledge.

There was a ton of swimming, visiting with cousins, eating together, sunset walks, family bonding, and new experiences. The kids spent hours one day playing Barbies with their 11-year-old cousin while I chatted with my dad and sister-in-law. They went in the pool three times in one day. I read on the couch while my parents entertained them. I even slept in one day!

They were long flights - four hours out, three and a half hours back. The kids got restless. Security was stressful. Carrying backpacks and Linnea’s carseat was tiring. But this entire trip was an exercise in proving to myself that I can do it. I can do more than I think I can. So can my kids.

On the way back, especially, Corinne was very anxious about missing the flight. We had to leave the house by 4am Phoenix time and the wait in the security line as well as the walk to the gate were full of her panicked cries. When I had the audacity to stop at Starbucks next to our gate to get us some breakfast, she practically hyperventilated. “Those are adult worries,” I kept telling her, trying to shift her focus to what she could control and the helpful actions she could take.

She was still stressed, but she rose to the occasion: waiting with Linnea at the gate while I got the gate check tag for the carseat, wheeling the suitcase down the jetway and on the plane, holding (and consuming) the chai latte we all desperately needed for an energy boost. She gave Linnea the window seat both ways, since she was taller and could see over Linnea; they negotiated a switch at one point but I didn’t have to intervene.

From the flight out - one of my new favorite pictures of these two

Much like our trip to Cincinnati, it felt like a promising new beginning for what we can do as a family - and as portions of that family. There were some meltdowns and I am still exhausted from being the full-time parent for multiple days in a row, but overall? A rousing success.

I flew a ton as a child, first with family and then, starting when I was 12, on my own. My first solo flight had the fateful travel days 9/5-11/2001 which necessitated an emergency drive from Baltimore down to Orlando by my dad to rescue me; I was back at it the next year with a cross-country flight to LA to visit my aunt and uncle. Most of the flights I’ve taken in the past decade have been international: Paris, Barcelona, Zagreb.

Between covid and having two young children, it felt like flying had been taken away from me. How grateful I am to have had this chance, to do something new and yet something so very familiar, to show my kids the ups and downs (literally and metaphorically) of air travel, to land in a new place and be surrounded by beloved people.

The Rockies from the plane

And how very grateful I am to be home again, to pass off the tooth-brushing and snack-feeding to another parent, to relish the green of spring in Chicago, and to know the world is closer once again to being at our fingertips.