Floating.

Traveling is a little like floating. All the water flows along under us and we skim along the surface, watching the sky until we will finally bump into home. 

We tell the kids to get into the car. “Who are we going to see today?” they ask. They float along with us. 

We’ve been driving through desert, the brushy landscape of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Ojai. Coastal and inland, blue and browns, with dark green smudges and brilliant flashes of pink bougainvillea. Old mission-style buildings, greebs in the water. We land with friends and they have dinner waiting, smells greeting us as we climb out of the car. We skim through neighborhoods with estates like small villages. We walk beaches and I walk to an old spanish courthouse with my dear friend Joy. We talk and talk and our talk about the wide world has sorrow laced in and behind it, but we pray at the end and I know that God has the difficult, heartbreaking issues in his hands. We drive again and land in another desert town in a time of drought. 

There are brilliant points as we float along our river. Chinua and I sleeping on couches under the stars, fed and fed again, our cousin flying up to Detroit from Alabama to see us, my sister-in-law making the mac’n’cheese that I’ve raved about in the past, going out to paint and drink wine with my sisters-in-law, beach days, a day at the lagoon in Long Beach, this house in Santa Cruz where we are now. Sitting here with love in our hearts and a few days of rest ahead of us. 

And there are funny moments. We saw President Obama’s motorcade one day when we were in L.A. Because we are basically babies when it comes to the USA, we accidentally got ourselves searched by the Secret Service. It happened like this: we were leaving Hollywood and came upon an intersection where the police were stopping cars. An officer approached us and told us we had happened to get stuck right as they were closing the streets. “You can turn around,” he said. “Or wait it out. It’ll be about twenty minutes before he comes through.” 

“Wait it out! Wait it out!” the kids cried. We all wanted to see the President drive past. I thought of when the princess visited our town in Thailand and she stopped and chatted with people on the streets. Maybe he’ll stop and chat with us. Yes, and then he’ll invite us to his dinner and we’ll be the guests of honor, hooray!

So the kids and I poured out of the van and crossed the intersection to stand with other spectators who were waiting. Chinua grabbed his camera and stepped out of the van to join us. Our van certainly wasn't going anywhere until after the motorcade passed by, so he figured he could just leave our vehicle there. 

Um. Mistake. We watched from across the courtyard as cops and secret service agents asked Chinua to step away from the van and at least five of them and a german shephere searched it. I was talking with other spectators and watching this (I wasn’t allowed to cross the street to get back to the van) wondering what on earth was happening. Turns out you’re not allowed to get out and leave your van when a president’s motorcade is about to pass through. 

We waved like crazy in the two minutes that the cars were passing by, and then I felt incredibly uncomfortable at the sheer force that surrounded the president.  I hadn’t registered that a motorcade is comprised of cars, but also about a hundred motorcycle cops with large guns. Yuck. This wasn’t the princess’s visit to Pai.

Exciting times, though, and everyone was very polite throughout. 

What else? I’ve been enjoying Pandora, which doesn’t work in Thailand. I’m collecting the things I need for going back. Teas and nutritional yeast are still on my list. I really am so excited to get home, but we’re still floating along, watching the trees go by overhead, enjoying all the moments of being in this beautiful country.