Oh, there are so few people who might get the joke. Jan, are you there? Makes me think of memory holders. Those who know enough to of your history to reminisce at the drop of a hat. And those who cannot remember for whom we hold memories.  

We are back at the airport. Still Milwaukee, checked in and waiting at the gate. A gate slightly to the right of yesterday’s gate but few changes. Our berries survived the night in the hotel frig which was not cold. Those berries plus an expensive banana, juice, scone that Julia insisted on because she likes mine and is disappointed with what we get, and coffee are breakfast. We could have had the hotel buffet but there was a pool at the hotel and Julia had asked to swim last night. I had been too tired last night–the release of travel prep stress exhaustion– and I could not summon energy to search our bags for swim suits.   

We slept. But only after supper at the restaurant. There we met a woman who was stuck after the cancelled flight. We rode to the hotel together and chatted then. She had finished dinner by the time we got to our table but she ordered another glass of beer and I asked her to join us. She was headed to a family reunion. The cancelled flight caused her to miss the first event (hopefully, the 6 am flight she caught this morning got her there for this afternoon’s festivities.). She is ex-military, on the cusp of buying her first house outside of of Seattle (inspection while she is away), she has two kids who have moved around a lot while she has been deployed, wounded during her last tour in Afghanistan. During a long recovery and rehab, she studied for her bachelors (she started with an associates degree plus a few credits) and then masters in education. She is a social studies teacher now, not the kind obsessed with maps and dates. She teaches kids where wars come from and how people live through them. “They need to know how it happens so they can stop the next ones.”

She had a seven year old son on the spectrum, she stutters under pressure (which I think is a different kind of stuttering from mine) and her father was a prison chaplain after he retired from the military. We found plenty to talk about and, I’m not saying that I would have given up yesterday’s flight to have dinner with this woman, but I felt I had met a comrade–talking through imperfect speech, another autism mom and someone who has an insiders’ perception of prisons. Lemons to lemonade–such good fortune. 

And Julia drew Winter, the dragon for her.  

Back in our room, we watched the end of Avatar and I forgot how beautiful the movie is. Julia is ready to see it. Interesting, Julia snuggled with me in my bed for the movie and then moved to her own bed to sleep. This is new. In the past, she has not been interested in snuggling unless she was afraid or she was not interested in her own sleeping space. Yesterday, she wanted both.  

This morning we decided to go swimming in the hotel pool instead of breakfast–we would have a couple of hours in the airport to catch breakfast. But we were too early and the pool was not open. We went to the front desk and I asked if we could bend the rules. I told our story of a flight cancelled and Julia piped in that she was “waiting patiently.” The manager was charmed–by her, not me, and we splashed around for 40 minutes before leaving.  

Back at the airport now. Still waiting. Everything points to a good travel day and Cheshire is at the other end. So is New York. Such a good start for an adventure.