Oh. My. Gods. - Weebly

line at LAX security was so long I didn’t have time to buy the latest
Runner’s World.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” a French-accented male voice announces,
“we have begun our final descent into Charles de Gaulle airport
and should be on the ground in approximately thirty minutes.”
That was another thing. Our flight to Athens routed through
Paris, but did I get to hop out and see the city of lights? No. We have
forty-five minutes to get to our connecting flight and I’ll be lucky if
I have time to look out the window at the clouds over Paris.
“Madame.” A flight attendant gently shakes Mom awake. “We are
landing, you must sit up.”
Mom stretches in a big yawn and manages a sleepy, “Merci.”
The flight attendant throws me a skeptical look—like I can help
it if Mom sleeps like the dead—but moves on to wake the other
sleeping passengers.
I go back to scanning the clouds below for a peek at the Eiffel
Tower or the Louvre or something monumental. Even a beret would
be acceptable at this point.
“Did you sleep, Phoebe?” Mom asks as she slips back into the
seat next to mine.
No, I want to say, I didn’t sleep. How can I be expected to sleep
when I’m crossing an ocean for the first time? Or starting at a new
school for the first time since kindergarten? Or landing on foreign
soil knowing it will be months, if not longer, before I get back to
the land of shopping malls and French fries—and don’t even try
to trick me with the whole there-are-McDonald’s-everywhere argument
because I know it just won’t be the same. Not when I’m eating
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