Moving Day

The day we have been --dreading? --or --looking forward to? Our emotions are so mixed.

Our suitcases are packed for us to survive for five to six weeks. We are to live in our house with rental furniture until our cargo container with all our belongings arrives after crossing the Atlantic by ship.

Until the last minute, though, I was scurrying around deciding on last minute items to take and trying not to panic. Our good friends, the Aubers, thought to bring us lunch and we enjoyed munching on our sandwiches with them.

While waiting for the airport shuttle to arrive, the Aubers and our good friends and neighbors, the Honeys, stood with us. What a surreal moment that was when the shuttle finally came into view. The tears flowed and I think we were all in a state of shock. The Honeys even unfurled a goodbye banner they had made for us. What affected David and me the most was seeing our kids saying goodbye to their friends. We would have all been happy to stay in Atlanta forever (as long as all our friends did, too), and we felt so awful that our decision to move was going to tear our children away from their friends. We can only hope we made the right decision.

It was a quiet ride to the airport, but even that short trip could not end without a little drama. Our driver did not seem to know the airport very well and in spite of our protests, ended up letting us off at an island in between two streets. So there we were with four kids, 10 large bags and dog in a crate, with cars and buses whizzing by us, wondering how we were to get across the street to the departure area. We hoped this was not a foreshadowing of how the rest of the trip was going to go.

David was able to coax a skycab to cross the busy street to help us get to check-in. At that point, everything went well. We got to our gate and were struck by the large number of U.S. soldiers there. We boarded and the kids were thrilled with our business class accommodations. A flight attendant greeted us right away with comic books and German gummy bears (one of our favorites). The kids were able to watch movies on their own personal TV screens while they enjoyed their Häagen-Dazs ice cream and then recline almost totally horizontal for bed. The only thing James complained about was that the flight attendants were too attentive. He just wanted to watch his movie, thank you very much, but they kept bugging him to see if he needed anything.

Rebecca was very restless and would not settle down until she banged her head on the hard armrest and cried herself to sleep. I dozed, but my mind was going a mile a minute, and it seemed way too soon that we were descending into Frankfurt.