Getting Here

After a long and at times nightmare-worthy journey, B and I arrived in Bonn last Thursday, August 2 to find a cozy and bustling small city brimming with charm. We are doing fine. Oscar is doing especially well, owing to the fact that his responsibilities involve sleeping, figuring out how to climb the ladder to the loft to snuggle with us at night, and evacuating his bladder in the correct locale (all fortunately going quite well). Brian and I, on the other hand, are saddled with taking care of the nonsense that comes with moving to Germany - registering our address, getting a bank account and health insurance, finding a flat, and (fingers crossed on this one) getting a residence permit - but more on that later.

A few days into being here, I started to feel guilty about not updating my loved ones on the news of our departure and our first, packed days here - I haven't even talked to Sandya and Sudi. I kept thinking of Melissa and her mass emails, but I've never been able to bring myself to write one. It's too important to me that I not fall out of touch with loved ones and people in general while I'm here - an easy thing to do being partly housebound, jobless due to illness, and not speaking the language - hence this blog, at least!

So, about that journey: we left Chicago two weeks and two days ago. It wasn't a tearful goodbye - we blasted "End Moraine" by Sparta, about wanting glaciers to ravage a place, in our moving truck as we drove south on Stony Island to the Skyway for the very last time. Chicago managed to keep us more than a day longer than expected - stupid delays involving our vet forgetting to sign a form, medication troubles, but, most of all, my health not being good enough to handle the nonstop packing required to get out on time. So we hit the road at 12:50 am and hit a downpour and a great wave of exhaustion about an hour later and, after much searching, found the only available room in that quarter of Indiana, snuck Oscar in, and bedded down past 3 am, with me at least trying to get it through my head that we're done, really done, with that horrible city that took so much from both of us.

The next week or so passed in a blur of exhaustion and (for me) sickness and pain mixed with seeing loved ones, of B and many helpful hands unloading the truck into Brian's parents' basement, of lying in the grass under blue sky streaked with wisps of fragrant woodsmoke and thinking this is just as much our home as anywhere else, of meaning to repack our stuff and figure out what goes to Germany and what goes to Flemington but being unable to yet again due to sickness and short time - then heading to Flemington as our last stop before Germany, where being ill meant not being able to handle all the myriad tasks required before our departure, where unpacking boxes and packing suitcases waited, literally, until the last second....

Here's the part I still can't believe. The plan was to leave for Newark at 8:30 pm to get to Newark in time for our 11:50 pm flight. Yeah, I know they recommend getting to the airport three hours in advance for international flights, but wasted time in the airport meant extra time in the carrier for Oscar, so we opted to have a bit less time at the airport. I confirmed the flight at least three times in the previous three weeks, mostly to check that Lufthansa still had us down for an in-cabin pet reservation (so young Oscar could spend the flight in his carrier on our laps or at our feet rather than in a cargo hold). The morning and afternoon of August 1st passed in a painful and determined flurry of activity to get everything packed, to check and double check that we have what we need, our papers, our documents, one last slog before we're off.... At 7:50 pm, about to consider a pause to scarf down some food that Mom prepared hours before, and I get this tingle that I might have been taking our 11:50 pm departure time for granted - is that really the exact time? So I grab the palm pilot and bring up our itinerary: depart Newark 9:50 pm. Two hours from now.

Reeling, head spinning, I tell B we've got a problem and show him the palm. Shock, and I start to whimper and cry for a second, then we pull ourselves together - this is a living nightmare. Haven't we all had this nightmare? My mom says she has the one where she's moving and has to leave NOW and isn't packed. For a few years now I've had the nightmare that the international trip I've been planning has sneaked up on me and I realize that I need to be at the airport NOW and I'm not even ready. (Which makes me wonder: when are all my other nightmares going to come true? I'm past due for my teeth to fall out and for a Godzilla-Oscar to be sharpening claws on the Fearings' roof!)

It's 7:50, and the flight leaves at 9:50 - we should be at the airport already, should be in the check-in line. One of our six giant suitcases is still not packed. Thank god at least we've already fed Oscar and he's already peed. 45 minutes to get to the airport best case, and we have to be checked in one hour before departure to get on the flight. And if we miss the flight - no Oscar reservation, and what about our booking from Frankfurt to Bonn? Race around the house to grab the toiletries, shoes, a few books, Oscar supplies to chuck into the suitcase. B tells Mom the news - panic spreads across her face and body. She tells Dad that there's a change of plans and we need to go right away, don't even worry about wearing shoes. For the moment, Dad doesn't ask why and calmly seems to think that we've decided to leave earlier, as he'd originally recommended. What he must think of the madness around him as we tear around the house to pull our stuff together. We leave the house ten minutes later, Dad driving the pickup truck he rented to haul us and our baggage. Mom drops the news on him halfway to I-78, and he starts to panic, sheer terror - this is the sort of out-of-control situation I think Dad fears most of all, and the poor man has to drive fast and safe to Newark under these conditions. B and I hold hands in the back seat, and somehow I'm serene, suspended in this most stressful situation. Maybe it's all those nightmares I've had in the past - this, maybe because it's real, is easier, because, unlike in a dream, I know there's almost nothing we can do about it now.

I'm not even beating myself up over getting the time wrong - this is not an error, this is a total malfunction on my part. All of this, all the planning and work and stress and details to tend to, have clearly been far more than my compromised hypothyroid brain can handle. I've been suffering under the weight of all this work for weeks and weeks, and I've noticed memory lapses and other cognitive blips - and finally I buckled. How many times did I confirm the flight time? Why did I think 11:50 pm? I can only imagine that I took it from the departure time of the previous flight I flew, Bangkok to Tokyo two weeks before. God damn the short term memory problems that come with a thyroid problem! What an insane error to make.

Somehow, Mom and Dad keep it together at the helm, devise a plan to meet up while Dad parks the truck (in the rush to leave the house, no one brought a cell phone), and we make it to Newark in great time, but still we arrive with less than one hour before the flight. While everyone else unloads the pickup truck, I run to the Lufthansa counter - no line! Is there any way we can make this flight?, I ask. A sharp Irish woman looks back at me across the counter and asks for my passport, asks where Brian and Oscar and our luggage are, and I, incredulous, feel a manic smile spread across my face. Long story short - we made it! Enough adrenaline for the year, thank you.

The rest of the journey was fine. Incredibly disheveled, we passed through security with junk falling out of our bags and Oscar wheeling all four clawed legs for freedom as we pulled him out of his carrier so it could be x-rayed. Security claimed a paring knife (oops!) but let me keep Oscar's liquid meds and meat, and we made our way on. Oscar did really well on the flight, considering that he was not sedated (though we did give him a little valerian to help him sleep). About an hour before we landed, he became all meows and scratching, miserable. When we landed in Frankfurt, we snagged one of those private baby-changing rooms and let him out - this was a brilliant idea! Should be part of the standard bag of tricks for people transporting pets. The train ride from Frankfurt to Bonn was completely beautiful and surreal, snaking along the Rhine with its steep hillsides stitched with grapevines, its crumbling castles, and its dense villages of colorful houses tucked here and there. Brian read us Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as we traveled, so the fantasy world of J.K. Rowling with its tasks and trials mingled with our own. We arrived in Bonn on schedule, met the person who gave us the keys to our flat, and breathed a sigh of relief that we've finally arrived.

(Subsequent posts will be shorter!)