"so how did the two of you meet?"

Groggy from the overnight flight, I climb off the plane and enter the Brussels airport. I’m four months into a new job and two months from relocating to Kigali, Rwanda. I’ve spent the last several days looking for housing, attending meetings and getting to know my new team a little more. I will become very familiar with this route, this airport, over the next three years, but this is my first experience with it. 

As I wander the no-man’s-land of the nondescript transit hallways, I feel perplexed. There are stairs and escalators and doors at various intervals, but nothing seems to be labeled. Finally I just choose one at random and am relieved to find myself in a terminal with actual signs and flight monitors. I locate the gate number I’m looking for and head that direction. 

Along the way, I find a restroom where I brush my teeth, wash my face and try to make my hair look halfway presentable. And I put on a dash of mascara. Because I’m not just headed to my next flight. First I am headed to a gate where I will meet up with the man I love. Joe and I are just a few weeks from celebrating one year of dating, and this is the fifth country where we have met up.

I order a coffee and find a seat with a good view of his gate. Sleeplessness, caffeine and excitement all do their part to make my heart race. 

Young and in love!

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So many hours of my adult life have been spent in airports. Working an international job for the eight years before I got married, I seemed to always be headed to or from an airport.  When I got married and then we had children the internationality of our life did not stop, and so airports became a family affair. I have often said that my older daughter is more at home in airports than almost anywhere else. In the chaos of a busy airport she relaxes. My younger daughter too has an affinity for airports. “I love you to the airport and back,” she sometimes says as she is going to bed.

“How did the two of you meet?” It is a question that comes up almost anytime Joe and I meet someone new. What they are often really asking is, “How did this American woman and British man end up together?” So this is part of that story, and it is a fun story to tell. But of course this story, like all our stories, was not a stand-alone incident. It happened right in the middle of everything else.

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Groggy from the overnight flight, I climb off the plane and enter London’s Heathrow airport. I’m three years into a job taking groups of people all over the world to see the work my organization does. For three years I have visited eight to 12 countries a year, with 20 to 40 people in tow each time. At home in Colorado, my friends start their voicemail messages to me with, “Hey Phoebe. I don’t know if you’re in the country or not right now but…”

I am tired. Not the jetlag kind of tired but the feel-it-in-my-bones-and-in-my-heart kind of tired. I am contemplating resigning from my job and am hoping this trip will help me make a decision. “Let this trip help me fall in love with my work again,” is my recurring prayer, “or make it clear that I should get out.”

After a day to wander the streets of London by myself before putting my tour leader hat back on, I board a flight to Uganda with 42 people in my group. We arrive in Kampala the next morning and make it through a day of light activity to keep ourselves awake until we can reasonably fall into our beds. I am just turning out the light when there’s a knock on my door.

A tour member has fallen and broken her arm. Badly. There is a bumpy ride to the hospital, and a night of trying to help this woman make decisions about the best course of treatment, and being her back rest and holding her still while the doctor sets her arm, and phone calls to her husband to explain the situation. Back at the hotel I get a couple hours sleep before I must jump back in to the day’s activities.

At 10PM, I am turning off my light. My phone rings. “I think I have malaria,” says the voice on the line. Of course he does not have malaria. But the next few hours consist of multiple phone calls, assurances, negotiations and finally, my being asked to come look at his vomit to help him determine whether he might have food poisoning instead of malaria.

I have barely slept in four days, we are only two days into our nine-day trip, and I am equal parts laughing and crying as I think, “Okay! I will resign!! I just need to get everyone home in one piece.” There are many confirmations of this decision over the course of the next seven days but thankfully there are no more broken bones, no more vomit.

I get home and take a day to recover before returning to work. When I return to the office I hand in my notice.

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Groggy from the overnight flight, I climb off the plane and enter London’s Heathrow airport. Again. But this time I am alone. I resigned from my job five weeks ago and I’m on my way back to Uganda. I have agreed to meet up at Heathrow later today with a couple who is getting married in two months. After a few hours wandering around London, I head back to the airport and find them outside a coffee shop. I am a little acquainted with the bride through mutual friends. After some discussion, they ask if I will consider taking their wedding photos on my way back through London. I usually say no to weddings, but one month into a new freelance photography and writing business, I say yes.

Two incredible months go by in rural Uganda while I work at Aidchild, an amazing pediatric AIDS home. (Many of the stories from that time I recounted in this very space in 2006.) And then I head back to London yet again. It is a beautiful wedding. June in the English countryside. My American accent causes a little stir as I try to wrangle all the wedding guests into a group photo. “You must be very good for them to hire you all the way from America!” I just smile.

At the reception, held in a large marquis in the midst of a field of wild flowers, I have just about finished up my work. I walk toward my friend, Tim, who, with his wife, had recommended me for this job. I just have a quick question. A few meters away from where he is standing, I pause. Tim is in a conversation with a very attractive man who looks very good in his suit. Do I interrupt? Will it look like I am trying to force an introduction? As I stand there undecided, the handsome man looks up and sees me. He smiles. I am found out, so I may as well proceed.

His name is Joe. He and Tim were friends as boys. The three of us chat together for several minutes. At some point, Tim extricates himself from the conversation. As the sun sets and the air cools, we start walking to keep warm. We wind our way through the amazing field of wild flowers.

After a bit I need to actually get back to work as the Ceilidh (Scottish country) dancing begins. But when I can next take a break from my photo-taking, Joe appears again. And so there is dancing and laughter and my new shoes rub blisters on my feet. Later still, after I have captured the bride and groom’s getaway, there is an invitation to go to the beach the next morning. But I cannot go and with that we say goodbye.

Two days later, I return home. Two months later, there is an email. It is the bride. “My friend Joe asked for your email address and I gave it to him,” she writes. “I hope that’s okay.”

The next day, a note from Joe himself. “I hope this email is not too weird,” he writes. “I didn’t really know what to write or particularly why I was writing it. I guess, sometimes, there are people who appear in life who are just really natural to talk to and be around, and trying to keep in touch with those people can’t be a bad thing.”

No. Not a bad thing at all.