Setting Out

For the past eight months my parents, my brother (his family), and I had all been living in the same complex. My brother lived in the town house next to mine, with our parents in a smaller two bedroom in the building just across the parking lot. It was the perfect setup and I would have been happy to stay there for a while once Moustafa got his visa and joined us, until we could save enough and find a house with a nice yard for the kids. But of course.. that wasn't happening. I'd packed up our simple home into a PODS container for storage and we'd been sleeping on my parents living room floor for the past three weeks in true gypsy fashion. Hamza, Ayah, and I shared the blow up mattress. Reddah and Ahmed took opposite ends of the sectional. It wasn't that bad especially since Hamza often slept with my parents on account of his night terrors. He'd been having them regularly over the past year. Just one symptom in a series of odd developments which I'd learned had come about as a result of being separated from his father.. More on that storm later.

The morning of our flight things went as chaotic as expected. I had hoped to wake early enough to finish the final re-pack and take Reddah to breakfast at Panera Bread. My friend Rana had given me a gift card at the going away party my girl friends gave me two days earlier. Of course the repack took longer than expected and I had to tell Reddah that her Taytay would take her later. She didn't seem too disappointed, considering it was supposed to be our last mother daughter meeting. I figured doing something she liked would help take the sting out of the day's events, no matter whom with.

It was drizzling appropriately all morning and my father began to announce that if we didn't leave in the next ten minutes, we would miss the flight. I told him it was a domestic flight since we were flying into NY first, so two hours early was plenty of time. He proceeded to rush us anyway, which in retrospect was a good thing because as gypsies, we are NEVER on time... ANYWHERE.. no matter HOW hard we try (with a few exceptions). My brother came in from across the way with his two year old powerhouse Yusuf. He agreed with my father and we all proceeded to have a "discussion" from across the apartment about why it was in fact NOT considered an international flight because I'd booked the flights separately and they were not on the same ticket; while I dressed the baby in the back room. More on the catastrophe that booking flights separately causes in a bit.

When I finally got downstairs, everyone was in the car, including Yusuf. My sister-in-law Minky was standing at the door with their daughter Hana who's only five days younger than Ayah. We kissed and hugged, and cooed how the babies will not see each other for a while. Then we made them kiss and let them grab at each other until my brother hurried us along. Yusuf refused to leave the boys and continued to sit in the back seat of the van as if he knew it was more than a trip to the store, and was down for the adventure. I kissed him and told him I loved him, as usual. He said something half English/half Korean sounding and then my brother took him and they both stood outside the van, never minding the rain. They smiled and waved to us and said something else in Korean, which I'm guessing was something along the lines of Bon voyage! Or, see you soon!