there's no place like home (m)

We awake at 4:30 a.m. on our last day.  Despite the ungodly hour, I spring out of bed, desperate to go home.

Don't get me wrong.  I've had a wonderful time here, but I'm ready to get home to see my husband and Sam.

We are outside the hotel by 5:15 a.m. The team leader has checked all the kids' rooms to make sure they got everything and left everything in good shape which will reflect well upon the U. S.

The 4 hour bus ride down the mountain is extra windy today.  The Russian mother behind me vomits.  I can't breathe.  The team leader in front of me offers me a lemon wafer.  I don't know if it is just the smell of the other woman's vomit or the lemon smell of the wafer that reminds me of the Limoncello hangover but I almost toss my cookies as well.  Harrison throws up.  It is like a vomitorium in that bus.

We get to the border of Austria.  The police pull us over.  Out of a police-issue BMW steps a young officer who looks very much like an aged progression version of Liesl's boyfriend from The Sound of Music.  I have a knot in my stomach.  Why are we being pulled over?

Passport check. 

Our team leader takes all of our passports, hands them to the officer, then hands them back to us.

We get to the Munich airport and have to sprint to our planes.  We are going in different directions.  California, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Colorado.  We say goodbye and rush to our airline counters to check in.

I open my passport.  IT IS NOT MINE!  Harrison opens his passport.  IT IS NOT HIS!

I know what this means.  Trouble.  We can't get home without our passports.  I look again at the passport photo in my hand.  It's Harrison's roommate's mother's.  Wouldn't you know that they are the only people not connecting to a flight!  They are boarding a train to tour Dachau, the concentration camp.  They have no cell phone and have left no forwarding address.  I want to cry.  Visions of going through a former concentration camp looking for my passport popped in my head.  Not good.  Not good at all.

I do not want to spend the night in Munich.  Harrison has to get back to school. 

I turn to our coach who sheds his jacket and baggage and races through the airport to the train station.

He returns triumphant.  He found them JUST as they were about to board the train to Dachau.

"How did you do that?" I exclaim.  "I'm good," he replies.  Yes, he is.  He's also sweating, "like a whore in church," (his words).

If you thought I was satisfied with my passport photo before, I can tell you it is my favorite photo of me now!

22 hours from the time we awoke in Italy, we arrive in Boston.

T is there to pick us up.  I've never been so happy to see him.

We get in the house and I'm so tired I can't stand up.

It's 9:30 p.m.  T looks at me and says, "I haven't had dinner yet.  What can you make?"

Bleary-eyed, I open a can of tuna fish.

Still, it's good to be home.