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thedaveandkimmershow · 11 months ago

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We flew home today.

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it because, since we essentially arrived in Seattle a coupla hours after we left Amsterdam on a ten hour flight...

Today is literally packed with more hours in it than the usual 24.

It's a weird experience thinking major parts of today actually happened yesterday...

When it was all.

The same.

Day.

We didn't get to bed the previous night in anything remotely resembling a timely manner, by the way. After Kimmer's packing extravaganza—a feat in which she seemingly fit more than should fit our luggage into our luggage—after that it was 1:30AM. Setting a wake-up alarm for 5AM, then, left us three-and-a-half hours for, you know, actual sleep. Only I didn't get (or I didn't take) the full three-and-a-half. I got maybe two hours and then lay awake in bed, eyes closed, relaxed under the covers. Not sure what that was all about but, as my friend Ann likes to say, there you go and there you are. 🙂

Regardless of the monumental lack of sleep, I got up a few minutes after five seemingly without penalty. I didn't feel groggy or sleep-deprived. I just got up, readied the hot water for tea and coffee, woke Kimmer up, jumped in the shower and, by the time I was done, she's up and we're doing our final step of packing the last of our belongings into our luggage before zipping them closed, moving them to the door while we stream "Cunk on Earth" on Netflix and take a few moments to eat some of our food for breakfast that's part of the food we can't take home with us 'cause there's no room.

Coupla minutes to 630, my cousin texts me a "Goodmorning!!!!!" and we're on our way down to the hotel lobby where, surprise surprise, not only is my cousin waiting for us but also her daughter, my niece, both lounging on the couch. It's a surprise because my niece was supposed to be overnight in another town to the east of her hometown, with friends celebrating their new home. Instead, she cut that night short and showed up to see us away.

Which was very very very very very very VERY sweet of her. ☺️

After we squared things with our hotel, we found my cousin's husband waiting outside, car backed up to the ramp in front of the entrance. So we throw our bags in the back, jump in the car, and off we go.

I should mention here that I'm pretty proud of us 'cause this one time at the start of our marriage when we did this 'lil exercise, departing Holland a touch over thirty years ago, it was a comedy of errors. We were staying with my aunt and uncle outside of Amsterdam and we were still packing the very morning our flight was to leave. So it was a messy morning, rushed. I think my uncle might've slightly dinged a car behind and opposite his as he backed out of his parking spot in a hurry to get us to the airport on time. He was pretty classy about the whole affair, only casually remarking how my parents were always packed 'n ready a coupla days before leaving.

This time around, Kimmer packed us at the tail end of the previous day—technically the first hours of our departure day—then we slept a little, got up when we were supposed to, and were out the hotel right on time.

630AM.

Our plan's to arrive at Schiphol Airport three hours prior to our flight. Which is what happened.

So HUZZAH!!!!

😁

The night before, my niece gifted Kimmer with a candy-filled Harry Potter mug. So in the car this morning they're comparing Harry Potter merch when Kimmer asks my niece if she has any of the stickers.

No, I wish! comes the reply.

Now it so happens I have Harry Potter stickers in my rucksack 'cause I was gonna take some time on the flight to Holland placing them on my new water bottle. Never got around to it, though. So I pull them from my bag and hand them over to the back seat.

My first moment of gift-giving as an uncle. 😊

Later on the road, I recognize a bookend experience:

It's daylight again, the late morning of our first day in Holland. Monday. January 1. Six days before. We're traveling across the countryside to our hotel. The sun's out. It's been raining so the trees and grass and highway are painted with a lovely sheen. There are moist reflections in every color, on every texture, in everything we see. Which makes for a beautiful, classic Dutch pastoral scene.

On the radio, it's Depeche Mode, The Cure, and later, "Babe" by Styx. The inside of the car's basically filled with an 80s vibe. I'm talking music with my cousin's husband who's driving the car. We talk 80s music. Popular music. And, of course, music as it relates to my daughter's career as a professional musician. ☺️

Now it's six days after. It's today, this very moment, on the way to Schiphol Airport in the morning while it remains dark outside. It's nighttime for all intents and purposes even though we're navigating the space between 630 and 730 in the morning. In the front seats of the car we're talking about vacations, about traveling by car from Seattle to southern California, about driving that same distance from Holland to southern Italy. My cousin's husband describes yearly vacations ("holiday" as he refers to them) that are the equivalent of piling everyone in the car and hitting the road. In this case, he talks about arriving in Tuscany. He talks about arriving in Genoa. He talks about avoiding hard-case luggage in favor of duffle bags. He talks about traveling through Switzerland, driving the never-ending Gotthard Tunnel, traveling over the mountains when the tunnel's backed up. He describes one vacation they showed up on an Italian beach and no one was there. He describes various strategies for doing this holiday including splitting the 16-hour drive in two with a stayover in Switzerland, allowing for a 10AM casual departure on the first day of their travels. Returning home, the driving strategy becomes a single, mostly overnight, drive to avoid traffic.

It's fun to compare the way we take family vacations, family holiday. It's fun to compare all the things about them that are the same and the very few things that are different.

We also talk about traffic leading into Amsterdam, traffic cams on the outskirts of Amsterdam that serve the same purpose as the traffic cams in school zones in our neck of the woods. We talk about apps he uses to spot and report speed traps and, because we hit a bird just then, we share our own personal stories of hitting birds and other animals on the road. I relate stories I heard about deer leaping right into the sides of trucks or RVs. He wins for a personal story because one time on the way home with friends, a pretty large bird impacted the front windshield, smashing it inward. He's in the back seat of the car at the time looking up something on his phone when the impact occurs. So it's a violently sudden, catastrophic experience for him.

At the same time we're talking about all these things, the back seat of the car is engaged in more relational fare. Boyfriends and girlfriends. Parenting. And school.

At one point we're talking about another one of my cousins. We're talking about their kids when my niece leans forward into the front seat space to fill us in on a few things including shared family vacations with that cousin's family and that time one of the sons was in a TikTok video with his teacher. He was pretty embarrassed by it... but the video did get a lotta views. 😁

And with these competing, complementary, and mostly overlapping conversations in play, we pull into a parking lot at the airport, pull our bags from the back of the car, and walk into the terminal, the five of us.

It's 742AM.

In case you've never been, Schiphol Airport is huge. Schilphol Airport is MASSIVE. And while SeaTac has every airline represented in the main terminal as you enter, at Schiphol there's nothing central like that. You basically figure out in which direction your terminal is then you walk a bunch until you're closer to that terminal from which your flight leaves. It's only there that you finally arrive at the self check-in kiosks and the self baggage drop.

A lotta selfs going on in this airport, I gotta say.

It's definitely a good thing our family's with us because paying for our one big piece of luggage turns into at least a ten minute ordeal. The scanner can't (or won't) read my card. Can't. Can't. Can't. Until finally, with family standing all around me, pitching me suggestions, the scanner humors me and decides to work.

So family, as it turns out, is the essential ingredient to successfully paying baggage fees at Schiphol Airport. 😉

Once that's done, I realize we're living our parent's experience because, once upon a time, my parents, too, left with a lot of family food gifts in their luggage. Once upon a time, too, they had to buy extra luggage, like my cousin did for us the previous day, to hold all those food gifts. Once upon a time, too, my aunts and uncles walked my parents through the airport, helped them with their bags. Once upon a time, too, my aunts and uncles bade my parents farewell in this very airport with embraces and kisses on the cheek.

What was true then, it turns out, remains true today. I think the only difference is that we're more huggers these days.

Another difference, I think, is that we're more likely to draw this moment out because we don't want it to end. We can always think of more conversations to have, more pictures to take.

In the end, we say the things we need to say to each other, the things we want to say. And I'm sure after one round of hugs and a subsequent impromptu conversation, we indulged another round of hugs as if the first one never happened.

For me, my regret is leaving this family. This one and the larger one with whom we navigated the week. I'm also caught by the realization that it would've been a pretty cool thing to have known my cousin's husband earlier in both our lives. And I'm profoundly struck by the fact that, while we live a pretty good and fulfilling life in the states, our lives would've been better, our lives would definitely have been better, with my cousin in it.

Because she really is all that.

☺️☺️☺️

With our extended goodbyes out the way, and after one last round of family photographs—all of us in one image—my cousin and her family start making their way back to their car as we turn to get in line for the self baggage drop.

As we take our place in line, I remember to look back for my family. I immediately spot them walking away. They've been keeping track of us in line as well. And in that moment in which we catch each other's attention for the last time, we reach our hands high into the air to wave goodbye.

And finally.

Finally...

Go our separate ways.

❤️❤️❤️

#going home #holland #netherlands #family #love #seattle #amsterdam #schiphol airport #packing #saying goodbye #luggage #check-in #holiday #vacation #family travels #family history

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thedaveandkimmershow · 11 months ago

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Whenever we can't do something on vacation that my parents did no problem while traveling... it galls me.

For example, when our flight arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam beginning of this month, we got off the flight, walked a bunch, then through several security checkpoints including passport control on the other side of which was baggage claim.

Whoops. Not baggage claim. Not ours, at least. You see ours was still a bit of a walk away so we walked and walked and walked until finally our baggage claim appeared, then our baggage conveyor appeared, then finally our bag appeared. So we grab the bag, start rolling it toward the exit where I imagine my cousins are gonna be.

Why?

Because this is my long-ago memory from when I was a kid with my parents and we started making our way out of baggage claim and I saw my aunt, my mom's older sister, waiting for us on the other side of the glass, waving at us.

There was always family waiting to meet us right there as far as my memory's concerned.

So then this last trip, thirty, forty years since I traveled with my parents, we exit baggage claim and there's no one there. Now, one or another of my cousins was gonna be there but I couldn't reach either of them on my cell phone either by message or voice so...

Dead in the water.

Here we are, a long, long, looooooooong way away from home, with no way to contact anyone.

One more time:

No way.

To contact.

Anyone.

And yeah. You bet it's moments like these when I'm like

HOW DID MY PARENTS DO THIS???

Seriously.

How did they do it without WiFi and data and airport apps and voice-to-voice and texting and messaging and laptops? How on earth did they do what we're doing now only without massive, hand-held computing power with real-time functionality?

You see, they always were able to do this. No sweat.

And here we were sitting around the airport outside the recently exited baggage claim waiting for someone to find us.

Waiting for someone.

To just.

Find us.

No joke. That was our plan.

By the way I'm always surprised at how hard we lean on tech. And I'm also always surprised by the fact that my parents didn't have any.

How did they do this?

It's galling.

Planning and foresight, I'm guessing, though. Not a single minute of improvising, of winging it. They made arrangements in advance and told their relatives what flight, time, and place. And when the time came, the flight landed, we all converged on the agreed-upon place with no doubt we would soon see each other.

Call it the analog way.

And it worked.

Dang it. It worked.

Every time.

So yeah. Moments when our own limitations and inadequacies our so obviously revealed...

Moments when we're just waiting to be found because we are profoundly out of contact with anyone...

These moments definitively, unequivocally remind me of all the hard work my parents put into making things like international travel...

Look.

Like a piece of cake.

☺️