REGINA LANDOR

ALTERNATE FLIGHT

“He didn’t get me flowers for Mother’s Day,” I said, gesturing with my head in my husband Billy’s direction where he’d just left to go bring out the drinks. It was Mother’s Day. I was building a fire in our backyard for our friends, Rick and Paula, who’d come over for dinner.

We’d gathered here multiple times during the pandemic. They were our first guests when the shut-down began, coming to celebrate my birthday in May when we were new to the pandemic protocols of serving guests food, at a distance and with the hand-sanitizer nearby. I’d made a three-tiered, cream cheese-frosted carrot cake and we all sat well apart from each other trying to figure out how to serve the cake. Everyone ended up just helping themselves. We were cautious, but it was a balm to laugh and be near others. Despite the traffic moving toward the DC Beltway, we’d created a little oasis behind our wall. Flower pots now sat in clusters around the brick patio. Custom-fitted, burnt-red cushions for the wrought-iron chairs was my pandemic splurge.

I added kindling on top of the scrunched up newspaper and lit the match. “Can I bop him upside the head for you?” Paula asked. I laughed. Earlier in the day my brother sent me a text message telling me I’m a wonderful mother. My birthday had been a few days earlier. My brother wrote, “So many reasons to celebrate you this week. It’s exhausting!” I thought of Billy, poor guy. The pressure. There’s a moment in the TV series “30 Rock” when one of the characters realizes it’s Valentine’s Day. He exclaims to a coworker, “It’s Valentine’s Day?! AGAIN?!” Replace the words “Valentine’s Day” with any holiday and Billy gets a wry chuckle out of me by repeating that quote multiple times over the course of a year.

As the wood caught fire, I added some heavier logs, forming an A-frame over the crackling flames. “Billy says he doesn’t want society to tell him when to give flowers to his wife,” I reasoned to my friend. “He doesn’t want Hallmark to be in charge,” I shrugged. “He wants to get me flowers on his own terms.”

Paula looked at me and I could see the question forming over the flames before the words even hit my ears. “Yeah, but does he?” she asked. I knitted my eyebrows together and tried to remember the last time he got me flowers. I couldn’t remember.

“He does buy me chocolate,” I said. That was one of my birthday presents, a large box of chocolate that of course I shared with him. And our teen boys. I had about a fourth of it. Which makes sense. I’m hardly going to squirrel away an entire box of chocolate. Although, now that the box is empty I kind of wished I had.

I told our friends about my birthday. Billy and our boys wrote me a card. Billy is not an artist, but he drew a picture anyway of a pond, birds, trees, “...symbolizing the happiness you bring our family,” he wrote. Gabriel wrote, “You’re an awesome Mom.” Ethan, our older son, said in his message, “Can’t wait to play Twister tonight!”

My birthday request was game night and a movie. I picked Twister for old-times’ sake and Gestures, a Charades-like game. The non-verbal game of Gestures was an easy crossover from my teenagers' silent treatment. It wasn’t the stretch of Twister where I had to contort my body into impossible positions. We watched the movie Rocky while eating cupcakes Billy bought. Rocky doesn’t win in the end, but he sure overcomes so many odds that are against him. Did I subconsciously pick activities that mirrored parts of my life?

Over the weekend Billy and I poked around some antique shops looking for a garden chair for the front yard, another birthday wish. “I don’t trust myself to find a chair on my own you’re gonna like,” he said.

We didn’t find a chair, but we found a lamp. “Happy birthday,” Billy said as the cashier rang up the lamp. It was beautiful, a long, chrome base supporting a white, swivel shade, but it wasn’t cheap. Billy is frugal, but he never begrudges spending money on something we want or need, or that he knows will make me happy.

But still. It was Mother’s Day and I didn’t get flowers. Billy appeared with the drinks and I went in the house to bring out more food. Rick had already eaten almost the entire bowl of guacamole and chips himself while I looked on with admiration. The satisfaction I receive from feeding people runs deep. I returned with a crunchy loaf of French bread, a leafy salad, and a fresh spinach gratin on a tray. Paula wanted the recipe. “It’s easy,” I said. “I was going to make beans on toast, but Billy scoffed at that plan. He did a kind of ‘Ppf’ at that idea.” In defense of the beans, they soak all night and cook for hours on the stovetop with parmesan rinds, fresh rosemary, garlic, and onions creating a rich broth that’s served in bowls over garlic toast. Not a bad meal. But I was glad I went with the spinach gratin in the end. It was simple fare, and nothing beats simple fare as long as it’s delicious.

The fire was happily roaring along and I was enjoying my second glass of wine. I got up to bring out the cheesecake.

“What?! You made a cheesecake?” Paula exclaimed as I walked toward the backdoor. It was the other half of the cheesecake that I’d frozen a month ago when I made it to celebrate the end of writing a cooking blog for one year.

I came back onto the patio and handed my friends and Billy each a plate with a slice, and some blueberry compote on the side. “Did you make this sauce, too?” Paula wanted to know, slowly taking another bite.

“It’s a compote,” I said. Rick teased me by asking for more compost. We all swooned at the creaminess of the cake, the tartness from the lemon zest, the sweetness from the graham cracker-crumb crust. Me? I was more curious and awed that a cheesecake, after being frozen and thawed, could taste this incredible. “I could sell this, right?” I asked my friends. They both nodded, savoring their last bites.

After we said goodbye to our friends, Billy did all the dishes while I relaxed on the couch. I like our silent arrangement. I pull the meal together and he clears up and cleans the kitchen. “Happy Mother’s Day,” Billy said to me when we kissed goodnight.

A few days later, I was sitting by the gate in the airport about to board a plane to Chicago to visit my family whom I hadn’t seen in over a year. I did another quick look at the ticket on my phone. I was surprised to read in large letters at the top of the screen the words, “Economy Plus.” Without telling me, Billy had bumped me up. I texted Paula. “No flowers for Mother’s Day, but…” and I let her know what he’d done for me.

“They show their love in different ways,” she wrote back. “Enjoy!”

I was practically alone at the gate; it was so unlike all the trips Billy and I have taken with our boys overseas when normally we’re rubbing elbows on armrests with strangers in the gate area. The comfort of being together always eased the jitters of what we would find on the other end—what kind of city, people, language, school, housing, friends. Such is life in the Foreign Service. I tucked my phone back in my bag and thought about Billy’s face, the kindness of it.

I recalled another time he did something unexpected for me when we were at a very different airport terminal. It was close to midnight in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a country we called home for the past two years. Our son Gabriel was silently standing by our side, his lean frame resting against one of the big suitcases. His face was starting to become more defined, his features soft and almost feminine in their beauty, but it felt like a long time since I’d seen him break out into a smile.

We’d arrived at the airport early, and as usual at the airport in Addis, there were lots of travelers. It was jarring, being under the fluorescent lights so late at night and surrounded by so many people. Gabriel and I would be traveling alone for the first time, a quick decision Billy and I made that had never been part of the plan. “Wait here,” Billy said to me as he started to walk away.

“Where are you going?” I asked him urgently, not wanting him to leave our side until we were at the gate.

“I’m going to bump you up to business class,” he said.

“Are you kidding me?” I said to him. “You don’t need to do that.”

But he turned back and looked at me with something close to pleading. “Let me do this,” he said. “I want to do this.” I didn’t say anything in return, and he walked away to wait in another line.

Our son was being “medically evacuated,” a term used in the Foreign Service to get someone quickly out of a foreign country when they are in dire need. Months ago he shut down, like an internal switch had unconsciously been turned off and he was no longer able to participate in activities, perform in school, or even get out of bed. We saw what depression looked like in a 12-year-old child and it was terrifying. I was taking him home to get help.

As we stood waiting for Billy to purchase new tickets, I realized my husband would seemingly pay any price for our son to get a good night’s sleep on this long journey home, and that’s why my gut told me not to argue with him. I saw it in his eyes. He needed to do something for us.

And when I said goodbye to my husband at one o’clock in the morning in Ethiopia, we both knew we were doing the right thing. Billy and Ethan would follow us home at the end of the school year, in three weeks, but the cloud that hung over Gabriel was so heavy and dark, we didn’t want to risk waiting. Our son needed the care now. And as the flight attendant handed me a flute of champagne, as our son enjoyed his pasta but could barely keep his eyes open during dessert, still I kept thinking about how ridiculous it was to have spent that much money. Our little stint in business class was only one leg of the journey, only getting us half-way home anyway.

I helped my son adjust the seat. It went all the way back and became a bed. He was out in an instant. I couldn’t fall asleep, turning in my chair, trying to wrap my head around spending one thousand dollars for a good night’s sleep. Actually, it was having the opposite effect. But I saw my husband’s eyes, asking me to let him give us this gift. It was all he could do. His eyes begged me to allow him to give comfort to his wife who had to journey alone, and to his son who was hurting.

I leaned my own chair back, closed my eyes, and began to relax. I turned my head over to Gabriel who looked so comfortable sprawled out on his bed in the sky, so different from all those other trips we’d taken where he cried at the discomfort of trying to sleep on a 14-hour flight in a cramped-up position. And as I watched my son sleep and as we hurtled toward help, I came to understand Billy’s gift and accept it.

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REGINA LANDOR TEACHES PRESCHOOL IN MARYLAND. SHE AND HER HUSBAND RAISED THEIR TWO BOYS OVERSEAS WITH THE FOREIGN SERVICE, LIVING IN SERBIA, ETHIOPIA, AND BANGLADESH. REGINA’S MOTHER LIVED WITH THEM IN DHAKA WHERE REGINA WROTE THE BOOK MARRY ME STOP ABOUT HER MOTHER’S EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND LAPSE INTO DEMENTIA. RECENT WORK OF HERS APPEARS IN THE LITERARY MAGAZINE COALESCE COMMUNITY AND ON BREVITY BLOG. REGINA SAYS ABOUT PUTTING HER STORIES OUT IN THE WORLD: “NOT SHARING MY STORIES WOULD BE LIKE MAKING A CHEESECAKE AND EATING THE WHOLE THING BY MYSELF. SHARING IS GOOD.”