Familiar Territory

So we said goodbye to our three boys, ages 8,7, & 6, and hopped on a plane to bring home number four. With Curious George in tow to help us document the trip for them, we entered familiar territory in the bowels of the international terminal at LAX. I can honestly say that experience goes a long way. Even though we have only done this one other time, everything felt comfortable and familiar, with the stress level being much less than before. And knowing that every step we took was bringing us one step closer to Misha, that didn’t hurt at all. The wait for the flight was actually nice. Sara and I had a chance to unwind a little, and a chance to talk without the insanity of the past two weeks swirling around us. There was nothing more we could do.

We boarded our Aeroflot flight (even the smell inside the airplane was familiar) and took our seats on the same side of the plane as last time. Even the food looked and tasted the same. 13 hours went by as quickly as it will, with Sara sleeping for a grand total of one hour and I catching 5 or 6 (Sara’s not bitter at all). After an uneventful trip through passport control (same smiling, welcoming face behind the glass to greet me) and a walk through customs (with an official giving me instructions in Russian and me shrugging my shoulders and giving my best “I’m a stupid American” half-smile before waving us through) we found our familiar-looking driver with our name clipped to his shoulder engrossed in his earphones and a magazine (same driver that took us to the airport last time for our flight to Krasnoyarsk). Due to this fact, we knew what the journey to the hotel would hold for us. Traffic clogged the highway into Moscow from the airport, but don’t think for a moment that stopped our driver from his mission. The car rattled quite a bit, but that would be expected when you spend as much time driving two wheels on the road and two wheels on the dirt shoulder as our driver did. Not exactly easy on the shocks and struts (there’s the extent of my automobile knowledge). The Marriott looked the same. I even recognized the receptionist and one of the bellhops. And certainly the price looked familiar! Same style room (though I swear they got smaller since we were here last), same pay-extra-for-it TV and pay-through-the-nose wireless internet access (which I am refusing to use as a matter of principle). Same not-quite-warm-enough room and not-quite-enough-blankets bed, but thankfully the same abundance of fluffy pillows.

It’s strange to be in a foreign country and have so much feel familiar to you. But our last trip to see Misha for the first time was so incredibly memorable, I can feel its details so firmly etched in my soul. Everything just feels right. Like we are supposed to be here. And I know that we are. I just can’t wait for that familiar sight of seeing Misha’s face again, and knowing that this time it will be forever…

JP