Home Stretch

http://polaroid41.com/home-stretch/

Monday, July 5th, 2021 - 11:37am.

Due to the pandemic, I haven’t been back to the US since Christmas 2019...that’s over a year and a half ago. Never in the 17 years that I’ve lived in France have I gone so long without a trip back.

I stumbled a bit writing that last sentence...I wasn’t sure if I should say ‘without a trip home’ or ‘without a trip back.’ The reality is, I’m lucky enough to call two places home. On August 2nd, I’ll go home to Minnesota and three weeks later I’ll come home to France.

At the end of May, after a couple of months of eyeing plane tickets and the ever-evolving Covid situation, I booked flights. It’s always a little stressful buying tickets, weighing the prices, the flight times, the layovers, the dates. In my 20s, I just booked the cheapest flight I could find. An eleven-hour layover in Chicago on the way? No problem. I’ll hop into the city and see friends! Now, with Elliot in tow, I’ve learned that some itineraries are too brutal even if the price is good. A thirty-six hour route on Turkish Airlines via Istanbul, Lisbon and Washington DC for half the cost? Thanks, but no thanks.

I ended up finding tickets I was really happy with, two layovers on the way there, but a great price and good timing. Whew! We are so beyond excited to see family again after such a long separation. Friends, neighbors, parents from school, everyone here knows how much we love our Minnesota summer trip and they’ve been asking, ‘Are you going this summer?! Did you book your tickets?!’ I’ve been happily telling everyone, ‘Yes! Yes! We got tickets! We are going!!!!’

Theeennn, last Tuesday I got an email from Lufthansa saying that our 1:15pm flight out of Toulouse was cancelled, and they were moving us to a 7:15am flight. The rest of flights were staying the same, which meant that our 18h trip was now a 24h our trip. And instead of getting a good night’s sleep and leaving for the airport around 11am, we’d be getting up at 4 or 4:30am and heading to the airport by 5:15am. Ummmmm. No, no, no, no, no. A 24h hour trip on a short night’s sleep starting at 5am is really not the same thing as an 18h trip after a goodnight’s sleep.

I glared at the email. Willing it to say something else.

There was a little box presenting three choices: accept the change, use my ticket at a later date, get a refund. I needed more information and clicked ‘get a refund’ thinking I would be able to read more about what that entailed, and suddenly it said: Thank you very much for your reply, we are processing your refund.

WHAT?! Wait! No! I don’t want a refund! Or I don’t know if I want a refund! I don’t know what I want!

...

The complete 'polaroid' - text, minicast et polaroid photo - available at: http://polaroid41.com/home-stretch/