a quiet moment -- and the journey continues

This is part two of this story. If you want to read part one, you can do that here. 

There is another image I cannot get out of my head. A moment six weeks before Paris.

Dad has recently found out that despite continuing treatments, his tumors are growing. He is actually feeling pretty good, considering. But he and my mother know there are very few options left. When I find this out, I know in my gut I need to get from Rwanda to San Diego where Dad and Mom are living, just to be there with them. Joe agrees with me.

I tell my parents my plan, which includes taking my little girl with me. I can hear in Mom’s voice that she wants me to come if possible. My dad, the consummate pragmatist, tries to talk me out of it. “You are pregnant ... That is a lot of traveling by yourself with a baby ... It’s a lot of money ... Don’t overreact.” My father has talked me out of various things over the years with his logical, pragmatic approach to life. Many times I could see later that it was a good thing I had listened to him. But I am not listening this time.

It is an enchanted journey. Flight attendants take pity on me and offer every hour or so to watch my little girl so I can stretch my legs, use the facilities. They bring her little things to eat, to play with. On the final leg, a tired young businessman ends up next to us. I can see that he is ready to sleep. My daughter decides he is her friend and wants to play with him. He graciously complies. “Thank you,” I say. “I’m sure this wasn’t your plan.” He smiles. “It’s good for me. My wife is expecting our first. I need the practice.”

We arrive into the beautiful November weather of San Diego. My little one has just had her first birthday and her Nonna and Papa get to give their gifts in person rather than shipping them to her. Dad’s most recent chemo cycle is finished and that means the side effects that accompany it are going away. It is a good week.

Together during our San Diego visit.

He has begun to struggle with too much calcium in his bloodstream and is going into the hospital every so often for IV treatments to combat this. He finds out while we are there that his levels are not good and he needs to go into the hospital overnight for one such treatment. He is not pleased. He may not have completely approved of my coming, but now that we are here he does not want any of his time with his daughter and granddaughter stolen from him.

“It’s okay,” my mother and I tell him. “We will stay at the hospital as long as we can. We will come back in the morning to bring you home again.” After getting him checked in at the hospital, Mom and I go to get some food for everyone. There is a pizza place nearby. My dad isn’t really a pizza guy, but it beats the hospital cafeteria.

So this is how we come to be at the hospital, talking and eating pizza with my dad who is feeling pretty good, but is dealing with nearly constant hot flashes from the cancer. He is sitting up in the hospital bed in shorts, and no shirt. It is getting close to my daughter’s bedtime so I strip her down to her diaper, getting ready to put her pajamas on.

“Bring her over here,” Dad says. “Let her sit with me.”

And so, for the next several minutes, they sit there together, my dad and my daughter. Neither is wearing a shirt. They are focused just on each other, as my little girl shows her Papa the new toy giraffe and lion she got for her birthday. Dad is rubbing the sweet skin of her back and her belly, giving her hug upon hug, placing kiss upon kiss on her gorgeous round cheeks. It is a perfect moment.

As a photographer, I momentarily regret that I have no camera with me. But after, I will always be thankful that I didn’t. I sit there and soak in this quiet, beautiful scene. To this day, I can see it — feel it — in a way no photo could have captured it.

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Back in Paris, I have spent a long time on the phone, trying to find out when we might leave. If we continue on to London, they tell me, it will probably be four to five days before we can get to the States. But that number might change because so many flights have not gone out, and so many more are still being cancelled. If we just fly out of Paris directly to the States, we might make it a day earlier. Nothing is confirmed or promised, but I get us on various lists and am told to check back at regular intervals.

After a few hours sleep, the bus arrives to take us back to Orly. In case by some miracle the flight can get out. At the very least we hope to get our little girl’s stroller, which had been gate-checked and we had been unable to retrieve the night before. For two more days we will do this back and forth between hotel and airport. Hoping.

We’ve arrived at Orly on Kenya Airways but Kenya Airways doesn’t actually fly to Orly. This means there is no ground crew, no one willing to open the luggage hold for any reason at all. We are never allowed to have our luggage or even our daughter’s stroller. Mercifully, we don’t know at that time that it will be 16 more days before we see any of our bags.

At some point we make it to a department store to get a change of clothes, coats. In the coming months and years so many people will say to me, “Well, if you are going to get stuck somewhere, Paris isn’t a bad place to be stuck.” It doesn’t work that way.

On the third day of our pilgrimage between hotel and airport, there is finally movement. The Kenya Airways flight has a departure time to travel to London. But we have had it reconfirmed multiple times that we will get to the States much more quickly if we stay in Paris. So we make the decision to give up our seats on the flight. Standing at the airport, just the three of us alone, having said goodbye to our fellow pilgrims and knowing all our belongings are still on that plane, we pray we have made the right decision.

With tentative seats on various flights that may or may not depart two or three days from now, we decide to move to the home of some friends Joe had grown up with, who had lived in Paris for several years now. They are much farther from the airport, but they are familiar faces and it will mean warm meals and playmates for our little girl. They greet us with open arms. After dinner that evening I call the airline yet again. A flight has opened up. If we can get ourselves to Charles du Galle Airport tomorrow, we have seats on a plane to Dallas. 

In the pre-dawn cold the next morning, we board a train to the airport, thankful for our new coats and, for the moment, grateful that we don’t have to deal with our checked luggage.




Part Three