Dreading To Fly

Making preparations for our time abroad. Getting mounds of laundry done, collecting various perscriptions, trying to make sure no necessary book or toy is left behind. I have decided not to bring the iPod, I'd only have to purchase an adapter, and I'd rather listen to England, anyway.

Someone remarked that traveling with children isn't reallt traveling, it's more like moving for a short period of time. Luckily, we have a home to stay in. So at least it's not like moving into a hotel for two weeks, there will be cooking and laundry and no one to tip.

I have been folding laundry all day, and cramming Doctor Who into my skull. I should be cramming lines, but there is still plenty of time for that. Like my trip to New York, there are lines that need to be changed for a performance in London. I don't need to tell them what Hamley's is, or what it looks like. I have been resisting the urge to change various words - chips for fries, loo for bathroom - except I wonder to what extent it is more or less distracting to hear unfamiliar turns of phrase than to wonder why the American is saying "telly."

But it's not as though they haven't been watching Seinfeld and Friends, too.

I have been flying since before I can recall. My first flight was when I was maybe six months old, which had Orson beat. As I have grown bigger and my body has become more calcified - and the seats have grown smaller - I have learned to develop the same healthy distaste for air travel that my father has always had.

Sept. 11 changed things, for sure. I have more nightmares about plane crashes than I ever did, which is to say I have them at all. Not that I am like those friends of mine who have refused to fly since then, I was on a plane three weeks after the event took place. But still. It's something that troubles me.

Fortunately, there are too many other things to deal with right now. And Zelda is too excited for words. By tomorrow night we want everything ready to go, so Monday can be spent remembering Calvin. We'll get out to the zoo before lunch, I hope. Maybe it will snow, who knows. It will still be a good day.