Passports, Bloody Knuckles and the Parisian Ice Queen

Remember that time when Sandra got kicked off of the airplane?!  Or the time that Robert with bloodied knuckles franticly scavenged the floor of the plane looking for her lost passport and in the nick of time found it, then immediately screamed throughout the plan that he found her passport and had to convince the pilot to let her back on to the plane?!  Well this is a fine beginning to our European adventure!

Sandra just graduated from Nursing school, Madison just graduated from Viewmont High School, Spencer (Madi’s boyfriend and all around awesome guy) just celebrated his one year anniversary from coming home from his LDS mission to Belgium and the Netherlands, and I am just Robert tagging along, but I do have a birthday coming up next week!  To celebrate all this, the four of us are taking a trip to Europe: Paris, France, Belgium and the Netherlands to be specific.

Because of work/school schedules, we didn’t leave on our trip till mid August.  This is one of the latest summer vacations we have ever taken.  If fact, the kids start school the day after we return.  Suddenly the day arrives to go.  Madi and I worked in the morning constantly looking at our watching in excited anticipating to leave.  Christian and Madeline had volunteered to watch the younger kids while we were away and Christian drove us to the airport.

(Sandra's Instagram Post at the airport ready almost ready to board)

Delta has a direct flight to Paris, which is wonderful.  As usual we were in the last 'Zone' to board and thus among the last 'nobodies' to load the plane.  As we get on they insist on seeing our passports again.  I already put them away.  So to the perturbment of the the stewardess lady checking us onto the plane I had to stop the line, get back into my bag and pull them all out again.  Then she wouldn't take the lot of our four passports together, but insisted that we each hold our own passport and boarding ticket.  She had a bad case of 'RBF' and as fate had planed it, this wouldn't be our last interaction with the delightful human-like stewardess.  We are now dangling our carry on luggage while pinching our boarding passes and passports in our fingers as we shuffle down the tight aisles onto the plane.  We sink as we realize that our seats are literally at the back of the plane, well to be honest, second to last row of the plane (poor bastards behind us!).  All the overhead bins, which are ridiculously smaller than normal, were already full.  So then we had to fight the incoming current of passengers and backtrack the plane looking for available bin space.  Our bags were now scattered throughout the back half of the plane.  We finally sit down when a young bearded guy with a trucker hat announces were in his seat.  We then realize that we had read the overhead seat numbers incorrectly and so everyone had to then shift over one seat to the left to accommodate Mr Trucker hat.  Already exhausted we begin tossing down pillows and blankets from the linen bin and slump in our seats to settle in.

As the self-proclaimed guardian and protector of the passports, I ask everyone to return them to me for safe guarding.  Madi and Spencer hand me theirs while Sandra continues to search through her things.  Several minutes later, I look over to Sandra and with imploring eyes which say, "um, you going to give me your passport?"  Sometimes Sandra likes to exercise her independence and not be 'controlled' so I wasn't going to push, but I see she is still looking.  Sandra’s tired and frustrated with all this last minute scurrying—“it’s somewhere here,  I just had it”.  I then ask Madi and Spence to check around their seats and front pockets to see if it’s over there (where Sandra first was sitting before we had to rearrange seats for that other guy).  We can't find it.  I start thinking, "come on guys, really start looking, this could be go so bad , what if it was dropped on the way onto the plane and it's sitting on the ramp or something?  Spencer then gets up and starts walking and looking up the aisles.  We have been all over the place trying to board and Sandra has no memory of what happened to her passport past the memory of checkin in with that grumpy gate stewardess.  We each take turns looking through the same bags and airplane pockets.  I then retrace my steps and being to search the pockets of our scattered luggage throughout the pins.  Spencer has now talked to a stewardess informing them of our situation.An announcement goes out over the intercom announcing ‘a passenger has misplaced her passport, could everyone please look around to see if it was dropped near them?”  Surprisingly, I see lots of action as passengers throughout the plane began searching around them.  Around our seats, there was so much clutter, carryon bags, blankets, pillows, snack bags.  Everyone was looking but there was so much stuff all over.  I said, "Lets clear out everything".  So we took Sandra’s things toward the back of the plane, that little recess waiting area by the restrooms (which were literally five steps away due to our stellar seat assignments) and I began dissecting the seats one by one, while Sandra for the tenth time again searched through her bags.  

The plane was already supposed to have began taxing toward the runway and now the flight crew was getting agitated.  That same prissy thin nosed stewardess who started all this passport mess in the first place started in on us, “We can’t wait anymore, I’m sorry, she will have to get off the plane!”  In horror, the devastation of our circumstance began to dawn on us--get off the plane!  “Just a minute, we’ll find it”, I frenziedly retorted.  We are all looking over the same places over and over, it has to be here.  Spencer have just talked to another, and helpful, Stewardesses relayed to us that the staff outside of the airplane have already looked up and down the plane ramp and they did not seen it—I then stubbornly declared to the icy pin-nosed stewardess that was scowling at me, "That means her passport has to be on this plane!  Unfazed by my logic and without any degree of sympathy or emotion persisted,   “We really can’t wait any longer, She has to get off the plane!” and began to start pushing Sandra down the aisle.  In incongruity and panic, I pleaded to Sandra, “What are we supposed to do?  Do we all get off, is the trip already over? What happens now?”  Sandra, now consigned to helplessness, said, no you guys stay, we’ll figure something out.”  I numbly watch as our long anticipate celebration adventure was ending before it was ever allowed to begin.  

As Sandra began fading away into the distance, my heart sank.  I was without words, stunned and helpless.  Then with a wild fury, assuming that everyone else who tried to helped search this plane was clearly was incompetent, acknowledging that only I could find this damn passport—I began kicking out everyone from their sears and threw myself into a whirlwind stuffing my hands down deep between seat cushions and front seat pockets.  I then dove onto the floor with my legs flailing and kicking anyone or anything that got in my way.  My hands invasively searching, literally intimately strip searching the bottom of each chairs and floor—feeling them up, down and every which way--around every bolt, crack and bar holding these seats to the plane, “Where the Hell are you,” I pleaded in a sacrilegious prayer! Then in divine response, the proverbial clouds broke and a ray of sunshine shone through as my now bloodied knuckles bumped into a small flat blue book wedged under the seat in front and diagonal to where Sandra was originally was sitting.  It was her passport!!!  It must have fallen to the ground and then got kicked forward and stuffed under the mounting bar fixing the seat to the plane.  I triumphantly stood up screaming, “I found it!”, “I found her passport!”.  The passengers around began to clap with relief and excitement for us!  I ran up the aisles to the front, “I Found It—I found her passport!—Get her back!”  

I then looked and saw that the plane door was already closed.  Sandra was already gone, off the plane.  The boarding ramp was already retracted away from the plane and that same ice bitch, declared, “Sorry, it’s too late, the plane is already closed, she will have to catch another flight!”  “But her passport is right here, it's right here on this plane—she can’t catch another flight to Paris with out her passport and it is here, in my hands, right here on this plane!  She has already checked in and was already on this plane before you kicked her off!  Open the doors and let her back on!!!”  Hearing the commotion, the pilot came out, initially siding with the stern stewardess, then to our saving blessings, another kind stewardess came to my rescue.  She was the one who had been talking to Madi and Spencer while helping us search in the back of the plane and had heard about how we are celebrating as a family Sandra’s graduation from Nursing School and how her whole family was here on board.  Ignoring the glares from the Ice-Queen, she began to soften the pilot, building an emotional and intellectual argument for letting her simple come back on.  The pilot conceded and informed the staff at the gate to send her back.  We all waited what felt like forever, not sure what was happening out there or if they had gotten a hold of her.  Spencer and Madi were frantically calling and texting but she never picked up.  No one on the plane knew what was going on there we just waited in silence. Finally, we see an old man peeping thorough the door’s 3 inch round window, the nice stewardess gives him an enthusiastic thumbs up and the plane door reopens.  Standing next to him in a heap of tears is my poor Sandra.  She comes back on and we embrace—the whole place breaks out in cheers and clapping.  Shaking with adrenaline and relief, I walked back to our seats with Sandra and all four passports in hand.

Periodically over the next nine and a half hours of flight, I would turn toward Sandra and stroking her arm or kissing her cheek, I think, she almost wasn’t.  I can’t believe how close we came from total vacation devastation.  In moments like this, you discover how deep you truly feel.  It wasn't about potentially missing Europe or the inconvenience of sorting out this mess, it was the fact that some wretched callus wench took my Sandra away from me.  That for just the briefest of moments we were forcefully separated from each other.

I know that I don't know what I believe anymore.  But this much I do know.  If we continue to exist after this life, I will be there kicking and wailing and thrashing my legs and bloody knuckles in Hell and through demonic Stewardesses searching for Sandra because I am not living life here or there without her by my side.  Until then, we're excited to enjoy Paris together.