Have Lamb Will Travel

The annual Labor Day pilgrimage to visit my Oma and Opa started out as usual - Erin and I late for our flight to Providence, RI. Why were we late? Insert reason: 1) Alexis didn’t remember when the flight was, 2) Alexis didn’t factor sending out her “away from my desk emails” and closing up her work station into the time she would need to get to the metro, 3) Alexis doesn’t wear a watch 4) Alexis lost something 5) Alexis is just incapable of calculating time and travel properly. The list could go on and on. We are almost always late and when we are late, it’s always my fault. This was no exception. Scott ended up calling us car service. Although, I believe the car service was really a way for him to assuage some guilt for not taking us himself. I was so sick I was shaking, coughing, burning up and freezing at the same time, and that has to make a boyfriend feel bad.

As the car rolled into heavy holiday-weekend, rush-hour traffic, I promptly fell asleep on Erin’s lap. Meanwhile, Erin fished a glossy fashion magazine from the soft leather seat pocket and began to read. The magazine had some absurd name designed to make us feel like we were part of the lush crowd, but it really translated to “these people have too much disposable money for you to take them seriously.” The magazine’s suggested retail value? $35! What pray tell does one get for this $35? A bunch of beautifully photographed ads and some articles written by lovely PR people. We get to the airport, Erin dragging both our bags with her, remarked that mine sure was heavy. Yes, yes it was – It was filled with veggies from my CSA, and a large leg of lamb. One might ask who in their right mind boards planes with mass quantities of produce and frozen meat, but if one is asking that they haven’t traveled with me before. I know a sort of secret security line at BWI, we zip right through and go wait by our gate. I knock my purse over three or four times and in my delirium have a hard time locating all the scraps of receipts and flotsam and jetsam.

Our trip is slightly different this year, since we will be joined by our friend Allison. She hasn’t joined us in about 5 years or so and moved up to NY several years ago. She will be driving from NY with my mother, we will meet in Providence, grab dinner and head up to the Cape to visit the grandparents. Allison is texting us taunting emails about her trip to Rockland Bakery, the bread Mecca of our world. Our anticipation level is running high and Erin and I finally get on the flight and head off to paradise.

We wait for our luggage and I am so out of it that I can’t manage to hold my purse and my luggage at the same time. By the time we leave the airport building I feel so horrible I have to lean against a “no parking” sign to hold me up, and the cold, dirty metal feels fabulous against my face. I can’t lift the heavy lamb-filled luggage into the backseat, I have to rely on strong, healthy, traveling companions to look after the precious cargo. I all but collapse in the car. The one thing that can perk me up is Italian food! Next stop: Angelo's. On the way to the restaurant Allison tells us how my mother has talked her into quitting her job and becoming a Waldorf teacher, I know this conversation, I have had it many times with my mother. We eat to our stomachs outrage and I am so ready to fall back into the car and sleep for another hour while being chauffeured to my grandparents house. When the bill arrives and I reach into my purse to pay it, and surprise…NO WALLET! NO WALLET! It’s gone.

We look under the table, dump out the purse, look in the parking lot, pull all of the stuff out of the car… no wallet. I call Scott who agrees to wire money. Mom, Allison and Erin find a flashlight to search the car, they enlist the parking lot guy to use his good – young eyes, nothing. Then we start calling airports, I feel like an idiot leaving messages at random airport answering machines. First you push one and two and whatever to get to the answering machine who tells you your call is important and I just know there is someone at the other end laughing so hard there belly is shaking like Santa Clause’s. Then suddenly, after an hour of driving and an hour of brooding - mom driving, me brooding… I get a call from Southwest – they have my wallet at baggage claim. All around me the angels start singing, little animated birds are flying around and the car, a rainbow magically appears, and I feel like I am being lifted away on a cloud. The guy on the other end of the phone tells me that since there is no money in the wallet it probably doesn’t need to be locked up. He sounds apologetic about the fact that there is no money in the wallet. I assure him that I know there was no money in there, no one took it, I didn’t have any.

The amazing thing about this is that I left my wallet in a taxi two weeks before and had to wait at the police station in the AM for the property manager. The cab driver had turned it in. That time I had two dollars in it and the Cab driver turned those in too. Either my karma is good, or not all of humanity is bad, considering my luck, I am going with the humanity having vestiges of virtue.

I won’t get the wallet back until we make it back to the airport to go home which just doesn’t matter. I have my girls, I am on the way to the most beautiful place on earth to visit people I absolutely adore. I have a stupendous cold and a mom and grandparents to take care of me. And, best of all, the lamb made it through security without a problem.