Suitcases and Other Miscellaneous Demons

We arrive in Los Angeles with high hopes and a lot of luggage.  And inevitably as the trip progresses we seem to accumulate a vast variety of items in direct proportion to our impending departure; this increase of good goods is always in the back of our minds, which isn’t so good. Five weeks in the States twice a year to catch up with family is just a seductive taste of life back home for me that disappears far too quickly from our real lives.  One minute we’re there with seemingly endless days ahead of us and suddenly we’re out of time and in 26 rather miserable hours later we’ll return to our sweet, charmingly ramshackle wee farm cottage in the middle of the South Island of New Zealand.  It seems like it was only yesterday when we got to my sister’s house in Manhattan Beach and knocked on the front door at 7:30 in the morning, with sleepless eyes and haggard bodies that had been jostled and vibrated and screeched and roared and rumbled nonstop for 16 or so hours. But who’s counting?

And now that we’re getting emotionally prepared to go home to our actual residence, we’re attempting to deal with the endless array of high tech toys and clothes and soaps and hats and knicky-knacky thingies we picked up along the way that now must be smashed into obedience inside our four bags that look smaller somehow than the bags we arrived with. My husband purchased a laptop here and a tablet for his sister who is nice enough to wake up at 4 a.m. to drive us the last few kilometers of our journey so we can leave our car at her house. What a gal.  But now every little speck of suitcase real estate seems to be taken up with stuff.

“But really,” I mutter to myself as I cringe at the task ahead. All this to-ing and fro-ing is worth all the trouble as I tape all of my face cream and hair care containers shut.  This particular morning of our second to last day I recall my mate’s typical admonition. “Don’t bring too much, this trip. You don’t really need three bags, do you?” My reply is always the same boring information, but important just the same. “Yes, John I do. And as you very well know or should know we are each allocated two checked bags whether or not you can fit all your minimal gear into a large ski bag. And as you are also aware at the end of the trip you will be putting some of your purchases into my third case, which is actually your second case rather than spend our life savings on shipping our surplus home,” I retort with an air of authority and smug satisfaction knowing that at the very least we’ll buy a few pair of jeans for our youngest son and whatever suits my fancy in retail paradise. Most of my relatives are in and around LA so I’m immersed in get-togethers with my two sons and their sons, two baby boys now along with a 19-year old grandson and my two doting sisters and their collective brood. So all up the minor sacrifices we make shooting over here in gigantic airplanes lugging our array of suitcases, backpacks and carry-ons pales in comparison to the time we spend with family.

That said, I’ll probably never master the art of packing. I know our suitcases look quite ordinary but they make me take the dumbest things I either never wear or never use. It’s really all their fault. They trip me up on every trip even though I’m definitely improving in my ruthless paring down attempts. Somehow I just feel most comfortable taking more than I’ll ever need and still there’s always something I didn’t take that I should have stowed in the bags. However, on this trip I never wore the four sunhats or the three baseball caps or the few extra belts or the flats or half the outfits I brought with matching handbags that I also ignored.

Go figure. At least I somehow survive the endless turbulence over the ocean and especially over the equator. So what if the room spins and hums for a couple of days after I land? It’s all worth it. My family means everything to me. But maybe I can take a few less things next time…but it’ll be winter and I’ll need more layers. Get the picture?

PS We haven’t been back to the States since this was written a few years ago, but we’re definitely planning a trip soon. We have so much catching up to do, in two states now, with a new baby boy to meet, my first great grandson and my other young grandsons to get to know again. We’ll be staying at many different houses and I hope that we can squeeze all these visits into 5 weeks. The photos show what we came home to and no matter how desperately sad I feel to leave them all, New Zealand is our home.