Going Home

David and I flew back from Frankfurt to Chicago.  As I sat crammed beside David in the narrow coach seats of the plane, I had hours to reflect on what we had seen and done. 

It had a different trip from the one I hoped to take.  I wanted a second honeymoon with Wally in Paris.  I got a three-week ramble around Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands, as well as France, and my companion was a 13-year-old child, my son David.

I had vivid memories of World War II.  I had not wanted to go to Germany. On this trip I discovered window boxes overflowing with flowers in pretty German villages and met friendly Germans. 

I was terrified when I killed the motor of the rental car while going up a cliff in the Alps, but Hay! I never would have had that kind of adventure in Chicago.

I was 49 years old, and I had never lived alone.  I lived at home with my parents until I married Wally, and I had been with him for the next 26 years. 

Except for a few nights in Paris, I scarcely thought about my husband during the entire trip.   The man had a contrary streak in him.  If I made a suggestion, he insisted we do something different, and we always did what Wally wanted to do.  If he had been with us, we would not have seen or done a quarter of the things David and I did.

From the first night we landed in Frankfurt and Karl failed to make hotel reservations, I was on my own.  I determined where we would sleep and eat and where we would go the next day.  David had no choice.  He had to go wherever I took him. 

At 13 David was still a little boy, small for his age and not yet a rebellious teenager.  I tried to do things he would enjoy.  Without him I would not have spent the day in Paris at Les Invalides.  I enjoyed that, especially meeting the German woman beside Napoleon’s tomb.

“Did you have a good time?” I asked David, as the stewardess took away our luncheon trays. 
“Oh, yes!” he said and closed his eyes to take a nap.  

I wished we had time to go to Italy. I wanted to see Florence and Rome.  And Venice, where Katherine Hepburn fell in the canal.  I also wanted to go to Norway, as my daughter Martha had been an exchange student.  I determined to go back to Europe.  When?  As soon as I could. 

At O’Hare Airport, Wally was waiting when we landed. 
“Did you have a good time?” he said.
“Yes, we did,” I said.

The next year we were divorced.