US Customs: Part Deux

Seventeen days after returning from Europe, this is what I found on my front porch today when I came home.

Return address: Baggage Dept, British Airways, JFK INTL Airport...

I love it when things work the way I want them to work.

The end of eurotrip 2007 and oh yeah, I'm an aunt!

Here’s how the story goes of the last few weeks of my life. I was in Amsterdam after leaving Paris and Krista (my traveling buddy) has to fly back to the states because of budgeting issues. So a couple of days later I go to the train station in Amsterdam and ask the man at the ticket counter for a ticket to somewhere in the south of France. I figure I'll start out this solo journey on the coast of France and see where it takes me- perhaps along the northwest coast of Italy, then across through Tuscany, down through Pisa, Rome, maybe to Naples, the birthplace of the Neapolitan pizza and ice cream. Who knows, right? The possibilities are thrilling and somewhat endless. So thirty minutes later I'm on an overnight train to Nice, which is on the French Riviera about 40km west of the Italian border.

I spend five days in Nice and it is gorgeous. Basically, I wake up whenever I want and then head to the beach to slum it on the French Riviera for a good part of the morning/afternoon. I usually do some hiking or biking or wandering or gelato-eating somewhere along the way. Not too shabby of a schedule, I know. But after a few days of this I have to admit this fact. I wasn't ready to be on this chi-chi (pronounced "she-she" meaning "fancy shmance") coast of southern France, which is like family holiday/topless-old-lady capital of Europe, all by myself. I don’t just mean being ready financially or with accommodations because of course I didn’t plan that in advance either. But much more piercing was the feeling of not being ready mentally or emotionally to fully enjoy my sassy French meal all by myself whilst overlooking the Mediterranean as hordes of families and lovers and groups of friends paraded by me enjoying their togetherness. Boo hoo, I know. Yes, I would like some cheese with that whine. Anyway, I then start thinking about how my older sister is about to give birth to her first child back home in North Carolina and how much I really would like to be there for that event. So this makes me realize that sticking it out on this gorgeous coast eating gelato all day by myself on a whim is kinda dumb. Beautiful and fun, but also kinda dumb. So I book my flight to North Carolina on Friday for the following Monday.

On Sunday I talk to my sister and she says she's having the very earliest signs of labor, even though she isn't due until the 19th. But lo and behold, on Monday after flying from Nice to London to JFK to Raleigh, I go straight from the airport to the hospital at 12:30am on Tuesday morning to find that my sister has just given birth an hour earlier. So I got to meet my nephew only an hour after he was born, which was one of the coolest things ever. His name is Isaac Phillip Hill and he is tiny tiny tiny, Born at only 6lbs 4.5oz. He has dark brown hair and dark blue eyes and barely ever cries but instead makes this strange whimpering noise like a puppy dog. And when he does cry, it’s really not that loud, but just the most pathetic little noise you’ve ever heard and it makes you want to just smother him with love and hugs and all things good. I know, cheesy. But give me a break. I’m an aunt! And yes, I would like a little wine with that cheese.

So now I'm here in NC with my sis and bro and my new nephew and my mom is also here for the week, and I just have to say that hanging out with family in Burlington, NC is just about as much fun as hanging out in Nice, France all by myself.

To sum up, I have no idea when I'm getting back to Texas. I need to take a quick nine hour drive back to JFK airport at some point to claim my bag that I left in customs because I was afraid I was going to miss my flight to Raleigh if I waited around for it. I called British Airways about it and apparently since I didn’t file a lost baggage report at the time, my luggage is now the property of the US government, seeing how it was an unclaimed bag off of an international flight. Oh well, I’m trying to be very Buddhist about it and let go of whatever attachments I had to all the stuff in the bag. I mean, if I had to sacrifice one small suitcase of my crap in order to get to the birth of my first nephew on time, then I suppose with a little pointed meditation, I can get over that. After all, he is a lot cuter than my favorite pair of jeans or my new ked tennis shoes, and he does smell a lot better than all of my dirty clothes that I wore while traipsing around Europe. Yes, I do believe that the sacrifice was quite worth it.