After a month of visiting with family on the East Coast –two weeks with my parents in my hometown of Womelsdorf, one week with little sister in a Philadelphia suburb, and one week in Port Washington, NY (one of the innermost suburbs on Long Island), we were FINALLY ready to take off for our trip from Iceland to Australia via the United Kingdom, Paris, Malta, Sicily, Italy, and Thailand (and perhaps a few other smatterings of places in between). FINALLY, we joked, we’d get to pee with the bathroom door open again!
Flights from NYC east to Europe and beyond are typically night flights. Our flight departed at 8:30 pm. With only a mere five hours to sleep, I dosed the girls with melatonin and encouraged slumber. We all save Ingrid (whose dose of dramamine knocked her out) barely sleep. We arrived in Iceland around 2 am EST. If I wasn’t so tired and equally excited to experience the warming waters of the Blue Lagoon’s geo-thermal pools, my mom radar would have gone off. I would have been able to more foresee the meltdowns that were to happen two hours from now. And, in this knowledge, I could have prepared. I was to jet lagged to see it coming.
Then, after over an hour of cruising around the 101 degree F pools, wading through the mist rising up to meet the 40 degree air temperature. After blueberry smoothie from the swim up bar and silica masks from the swim up mask bar. After finding the hottest spots, located in the center of the collection of pools and the coolest spots, located in the shallow sides of the pools, we all decided it was time to shower, change into dry clothes and make our way to the AirBnB in Reykjavik.
“Wasn’t that fun?” I small talked Ingrid while we showered together. She’s not a fan of showers. I find small talk distracts her from the task at hand, which, in this case, was to slather conditioner over her head–also not one of her favorite things –to remove the minerals of the geo-thermal waters.
‘Mom, stop smiling and talking to me. You’re being creepy,” Ingrid shot back before grabbing her towel and declaring she’s not showering. Hattie reacted to Ingrid’s reaction and the whole thing escalated into me taking my own shower in the stall next door, while the girls waited for me, Ingrid, wearing only her towel, shrieking and Hattie shouting for her to stop.
Other tourists stared. Some whispered unkind words to each other about me while they stared. My harsh whispering to the girls to calm down already, we’re all tired and this will be over soon didn’t work. “Mom,” Ingrid pleaded in a brief lucid moment, “I just feel really weird,” I knew this weirdness as jet-lag. She didn’t. “Your body is really tired, Ingrid,” I said. “It’ll be ok.” “Leave me alone. I am NOT tired,” she screamed and took off down the hall to the room locker room door.
Yes, we still had to get to our shared locker, dress and leave the spa. I cursed Pablo. In any marriage, the duties are divided. In ours, bathroom and locker room trips default to me.
In the end, we made it! We had a weird Goldilocks sock exchange. Hattie’s socks were somehow wet. Ingrid’s socks were too small and my two pairs of socks (plane socks from yesterday and the fresh ones) were just right. We excited the locker room with Ingrid’s hair in dreaded locks from the drying minerals and me donned in a child’s pair of no-show socks sliding down the back of my ankle each step I took into Iceland’s strange new landscape.
Next time, I thought, I’ll…. but before I could finish the thought, we were in the rental car driving towards the city and I was fast asleep.
The Blue Lagoon geothermal waters (before the locker room meltdowns).
28520 Miles 