Leaving for home

In a few short days we'll be heading to the airport for a long awaited visit home. I have two homes actually, Florida's west coast where I grew up and Southeast France where I also grew up, that is if you count growing up as anything that happens after age thirty. I have that awful expat phenomenon where I don't ever feel entirely at home in either place, and there is a giant, gaping hole left in my heart whenever I leave either place for the other for any length of time. I suppose the only solution is to grow very wealthy and have a leisurely life in both locales, staying six months out of the year in each and switching languages and cultures as easily as most people do their shoes. We should all be so lucky to enjoy such a life.



Leaving this Thursday will probably leave me very teary eyed because Seb will be left behind for the first six weeks. We are really quite attached as a couple don't get me wrong, but it's not the leaving of each other that will be difficult. It's going to be the first time our family unit will be apart for more than a few days and I think it will be a difficult burden for us to bear as new parents. Babies change so rapidly at this point in their little lives, I think that Seb will miss a great deal of baby S's milestones. These are moments that can never be recaptured and I know this will leave him dealing with the inevitable pangs of jealousy and more than his fair share of hurt. I can't really blame him because I'd be scratching at the walls if anyone separated me from baby S at this point. Well, after the first three days that is; envisioning self sipping pina colada with toes painted a pearly pink while stretched out on a breezy, azure shoreline.

Otherwise I'm testing out baby handling for the various international airports we'll be maneuvering. Can I actually carry a sack full of diapers and sundries, a very large purse stuffed with chocolate and Savoyard pottery, a baby and fold a stroller all with only two arms? My obsessing has led to several bickering matches between Seb and me, "are you crazy! I can't put my son on the floor of the airport! It's dirty and disgusting and someone could kidnap him!" "It's dirty" of course being the first of my concerns, kidnapping being second. Seb has had to remind me to try to relax on several points. I'm just thankful he's not the one traveling alone with baby S. I think he'd probably come tumbling out on the baggage carousel at the final destination, unscathed and babbling and chewing on a luggage tag. Seb would just collect him and stroll on out to meet me not a care in the world. Meanwhile I've already imagined the profiles of several of my potential seatmates, all of them unshaven men wearing very large heeled shoes and shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

Now for the checklists if you'll excuse me while I go off and obsess some more: children's Doliprane, birth certificate, passport numbers, emergency telephone numbers, frozen baby food, disposable diapers, earplugs (several sets for the entire plane), very cute baby outfits (to "market" baby S to my advantage), and the list goes on . . .

If you care to add anything I'm all ears.
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