Lemonade (London, Part 1)

Heathrow delays & Santorini falls: Growth from Breakage

Have you ever faced a setback that later became the source of unexpected strength? Share how life's twists transformed you!

I’ll go first…

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Apologies for the radio silence, but I was on a week-long trip to London. And before anyone gets wild ideas of how bougie my new life in Europe is, I told my mother I’d much rather spend a bit of “my inheritance” with her than collect cash after she’s gone. I’ve already lost one parent, and the last time Mom and I had a proper vacation just the two of us was around high school graduation when we went to see shows on Broadway. For anyone keeping track, it has been more than eighteen years since I was eighteen…and Chicago is still running.

The idea of visiting London together actually began while we were on a joint holiday with William’s mother in Scotland—if you have the means, spend Christmas in a castle; it is SO choice (twelve points if you get the reference). Preparing to fly home, my mom mentioned that she might extend the trip and visit the British Museum, a sight she’d never managed to see. I encouraged her and was a bit too oblivious to pick up on the hint that she didn’t want to go alone.

After we got back, I kept thinking about how much I’d like to be the one to accompany her to the British Museum. I wasn’t the best version of myself while we’d been in Scotland and I wanted a more positive memory with her. So, only a month before William and I made the decision to move to The Netherlands, Mom and I booked a trip to England. I, of course, later exchanged my plane for a train, and the fact that we were meeting in a different country than either of us live gave it a little extra glamor. I’d been anticipating the vacation ever since we landed in Rotterdam: a sort of marker between the “getting settled” and “whatever comes next” phases of William and my new life abroad.

I won’t lie, it was also going to be really nice to hug my mommy a couple of months after leaving the United States.

My travel began by getting up at ass o’clock to catch the metro from Den Haag to Rotterdam where I caught the Eurostar. In line, I met a lovely transgender scholar (hi Chloe!) and proceeded to stymie the security personnel with the 7 kg glass bead-filled blanket in my suitcase—in my defense, they did say there was no weight limit. Settling into the row I somehow got to myself, I received a text from William with a link to a news article…and my heart sank.

Mom was meant to land in a couple of hours, perhaps she’d be diverted to Gatwick or Dublin? The train was already moving by the time I saw her flight was headed back to Minneapolis. Despite the sunny day, my outlook clouded over quickly because instead of with Mom, it looked like I was going to be in London alone. Not the worst place, by any means, but it harkened back to my worst vacation: the one where my dad and I went to Greece.

Picture it, Santorini—April, 2010…

I was working on a Broadway tour, eager to travel, and Dad’s as-yet undiagnosed Lewy body dementia was just beginning to impair his day-to-day. True to the stubbornness I must have learned by osmosis since he and I weren’t genetically related, he didn’t want to face knowing what was going on. In an attempt to connect with him, we arranged to spend a week in Santorini and Athens.

The bumps began right away: my flight out of Buffalo was cancelled due to high winds. My dad was already en route, so I rented a car—they gave me a minivan—and barreled down the blustery highway to Rochester where JetBlue was able to get me to LaGuardia. Our flight to London was late in departing, resulting in the most insane airport transfer I’ve ever experienced: a stout woman in a red waistcoat holding up a yellow sign literally ran us through the terminal to make our connection.

Our bags, on the other hand...

Dad and I arrived in Athens with the promise that our luggage would be at our door by morning. We explained that if it weren’t, someone would need to send it on to Santorini, since we were spending the first few days there before returning to the capital for a few more. I remember looking out the window that night to see the Parthenon glowing in the distance…taunting me…

Making the best of the t-shirt and dental kit provided by the airline, Dad and I bedded down before our early morning ferry. There were no bags at the door when we awoke, so we begrudgingly made our way to the docks, crossing our fingers as well as the Aegean Sea. Seven nauseating hours later, we arrived on Santorini where a cab drove us to the airport to pick up our bags—remind me why we bothered with a boat?

Still, we’d finally arrived and our vacation would officially commence the following morning with a tour of the volcanic caldera and stops at a couple of villages around the island. Decidedly less queasy and in clean clothes, Dad and I had a lovely dinner before taking a walk along the cliffs.

The next day sucked.

After remarking about how others were wearing flip flops while ascending the volcano instead of good shoes like mine, the ground shifted beneath my feet and I felt a popping as I fell. Trying to stand, my right leg buckled underneath me and I went down again. Dad helped me to a bench before someone called for help and a pair of men arrived with a stretcher. Halfway down the mountain, they set me down and called for reinforcements. Not only was I requiring extraction, I was also too fat for two Greeks to carry…it took four. Talk about adding insult to injury!!

Getting this picture was NOT worth it.

On the boat, they gave me sodas from the cooler in an attempt to keep the swelling down. After dropping the group for their sunset dinner, the boat ran us back to port where a cab whisked us off to the medical center. After cutting up the leg of my pants and a quick (but painful) exam, the doctor’s advice was simple: “Go home, get MRI.”

Cut to me limping across the hotel room to use the weird wastebasket instead of flushing my toilet paper (the real reason not to visit) while Dad did his best to forage for food. Among the early symptoms of his dementia was an impaired sense of direction…and we were on an island with no street names, only winding paths through the gravity-defying stretches of all white buildings. Green-gilling the ferry ride back to Athens, I briefly considered visiting the Parthenon with my new souvenirs: crutches and a Velcro brace colored like the Greek flag.

I Googled the site’s accessibility options later: dicey, but technically possible.

Economic history buffs will recall that in response to the Greek government’s spring 2010 plan to cut spending and raise taxes to prevent fiscal collapse, something of a kerfuffle erupted. Athenians took to the streets in protest…and they were bloody serious about it! In the few days we’d been on the island, riots had broken out across the city and, instead of views of the Parthenon, there were smoldering fires from Molotov cocktails outside our hotel window.

I literally cried on the phone with the airline: “Get me the hell out of here!”

Sitting on the Eurostar to London fifteen years later, seeing my mother’s plane had turned around over Labrador, there wasn’t anyone I could call to fix it. My dad wasn’t there to talk to (though I know he still listens) and, as the feeling of hopes being dashed washed over me, I tried to remind myself there was nothing I personally could do that would make the electricity at Heathrow work any faster.

After all, it’s not like someone blew up a transformer and shut down the airport just to fuck with ME…right!?

Turns out that popping I felt on the volcano in Santorini was the rupture of both my ACL and PCL, followed by medically “spraining the living hell out of” my MCL when I tried to stand—seriously, the MRI showed a piece of spaghetti auditioning to be a sine wave. For those blissfully unaware of the inner workings of the human knee, that’s three of the four bits of collagen fiber that keep everything together.

Back in the US, I was fortunate to find an “orthopod” who suggested we let nature take its course rather than operating immediately. My backstage job demanded a lot of running up and down stairs and I like being ambulatory, so I applied myself to physical therapy, working through every episode of The Golden Girls and Doctor Who on an exercise bike. I never had surgery and I’m proud to say that as recently as last year, I was running outdoors.

Besides the physical work to stand on my own two feet, there was the metaphorical work of doing the same. It’s scary when the bottom falls out and you struggle to stand up again. Realizing you have weaknesses is disconcerting, especially in your late twenties when you’re starting to see cracks in the “invincibility” of youth. My dad was there to listen to me moan all the way back to the states, but I spent the next five years watching him slowly disappear along with any opportunity for us to have that kind of time together again…

…which is why I was so crestfallen when it looked as though my trip with my mom was falling apart. Perhaps with Dad’s voice in my ear, I reminded myself that fearing the worst and believing things will go wrong wasn’t my only choice. Yes, there could (and likely will) be many more bumps in the road ahead, but they only have the ability to steal my good mood if I let them.

I don’t have to fall into the same volcano over and over again, easy though it may be.

In the face of the hardships being felt around the globe, disruption of a vacation doesn’t feel all that significant, but I was incredibly disappointed by the prospect of not having the long-awaited experience with my mom. I let myself feel bummed all through Belgium, but then caught a glimmer of hope: the airline rebooked her to arrive on Sunday. Yes, it would cut two days out of our week, but we could still visit the British Museum…

Back on the ground in Minnesota, Mom was feeling like we should try again in a few weeks. The rebooking was a crappy itinerary—seven hours in the Philly airport is criminal—but it was something. I was nearing the Chunnel and we had tours scheduled, to say nothing of prepaid hotel rooms. I told her to see how she felt after a bit of sleep because we had a dream to realize, dammit!

The neon sign reads, “I want my time with you.”

Alighting at St. Pancras, I was determined to make the best of the fact that I was alone in London. Five minutes on the streets and I was reeling from the realization that, after weeks of trying at every opportunity, I didn’t have to say everything in Dutch…they all speak Engels in Engeland!

I’ve said before, I’m a walker and I knew one would improve my mood. After taking my own advice in the form of a brief nap, I was stepping out of the hotel for my walkabout when Mom called to say she’d found a ticket that would get her to London the next morning, recouping a whole day—hot diggity dog!

With a new spring in my step, I walked down to the Strand and up to Trafalgar Square before cutting through to the Mall and Armory, passing down Horse Guard’s Avenue to the Embankment. I continued along the Thames to Elizabeth Tower (not so big now, are you Ben?) and Westminster Abbey before winding my way through St. James’ Park and past Buckingham Palace. I soldiered on to Hyde Park Corner, up to Marble Arch, and back along Oxford Street before the sun set…something like 8 miles.

Returned to Russell Square, I treated myself to a chicken burger, thick-cut chips, and a sticky toffee pud washed down with a pint. As I tucked into bed, Mom was re-bound for the (now-open) Heathrow. Given the adage of a charm requiring three attempts, I fought against the voice in my head that wanted to doubt things could get back on track…

I did, however, wait until she landed to reschedule our British Museum tour, the operator gracious enough to let me make the last-minute change.

For at least a decade, I told the story of my “Greek tragedy” as a series of unfortunate events that befell me…until someone challenged me on that point of view: what if it wasn’t a disaster? What if it all turned out for the best? Yes, I was injured and that wasn’t great, but perhaps the timing of the fall was actually a good thing?

To make sense of that, you need the rest of the story: given the civil unrest in Greece, ours was among the last flights out before the airport staff joined in the city-wide strike. In London, our travel insurance paid for a night at the airport Sofitel before we boarded a plane to the US. Geological history buffs will remember that spring 2010 also brought the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull— I dare you to say that one time at a reasonable pace, let alone three times fast—and ours was the very last flight out before smoke plumes closed European airspace for a couple weeks.

Fucking volcanoes…

As uncomfortable as it was to think of the traumatic experience of blowing out my knee as a positive, I have come to see it that way. Louise Penny said it best, “Things are strongest where they’re broken.” Not only did I learn a great deal about myself in the recovery process, but I also got the chance to talk to my dad in a state of vulnerability I might never have otherwise reached. In addition to a great story, I learned about the healing capabilities of my body and we weren’t stuck in the middle of riots, nor trapped under a cloud of ash. I’ll never know what we might have done in either case…but I do know the grass is not always greener.

I am also well-aware that there are a great many things in this world that can’t be made better by a simple change of perspective. My father’s death in 2016 and deciding to leave the US eight years later are not things I am able to process instantly; however, I find ample opportunities to reframe my mindset on a smaller, daily basis…a practice that makes the bigger things (a bit) easier to tackle when they come.

And they still do: returning from our holiday in Scotland two years ago, we (deliberately) spent a night at the Heathrow Sofitel—a place I hadn’t visited since “that one time.” Walking down the skyway rather than being pushed in a wheelchair, tears filled my eyes as I realized I would never get to tell my dad how far I’ve come. I know he knows…but it isn’t the same.

If you’ve ever visited Europe, you know how common it is to have to go up a set of small stairs in order to get down a longer one; Mom’s eventual itinerary sent her west before she flew east. Being curious about how things will continue to unfold has proven infinitely more helpful than viewing even the tiniest hurdle as the proverbial end of the road.

One of the most frustrating lessons my father tried to teach me as a rigid, inflexible child was that I can’t control what happens, I can only control how I react to it. After struggling in vain against that essential truth for nearly forty years, I’m finally getting better at directing my energy towards what I can control.

When I woke up the next morning, Mom’s plane was over Ireland and the doubting voice in my head had nothing more to say. Twenty-six hours later than anticipated, I got to hug my mom and begin our magical adventure. Though Dad and I never visited the Parthenon, Mom and I saw the friezes looted from it…but that’s another story—stay tuned!

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