Chapter 1: The Long Flight Home to California (a real life adventure story)

Chapter 1: Introducing Charlotte Grace

“Charlotte!” I hear a voice call out that is not my own. I’m sitting in the terminal waiting to board our flight back to California and I crane my neck as I look around with curiosity.

It’s not an unusual name, but I always like to see who it belongs to. A little two-year-old scampers around. “Charlotte!” I hear the voice call again. I see her mom is younger than me, blonde and stylish.

“Is this Charlotte?” I ask her. The mom nods. “I have a Charlotte too,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says in a Boston accent, “Charlotte Grace.” 

I freeze. “Charlotte Grace? Really? This is Charlotte Grace too!” I gesture to my Charlotte puttering around. 

“Oh! Huh. Well, would you look at that?” The other mom smiles. She’s a little surprised, but I am floored! How many Charlotte Graces are there under five? And how many would I likely bump into in an airport at the boarding gate of a cross-country flight? Not many.

It’s a fun coincidence, but maybe I get too excited about things like that. I’m always looking for “God shots” like we say in AA. We continue chatting and I think, “What a cool story this will be.” 

Well, dear reader, the story is about to get a lot more interesting.

Bill and I spent a lot of time strategizing what to do with Charlotte at the airport.

Do we board early and take the time to settle in? Or is it better to wait till the last minute so she’s not sitting getting restless on the plane? We carefully weigh the options but no matter what happened last time, we can never perfectly predict how our little enigma will respond to this flight. 

Charlotte is autistic, so while we do our best to prepare her for changes like this, it’s hard to know what gets though. She’s semi-verbal, so while she has no problem requesting the items she wants (“iPad, watermelon, car”) or saying “hi,” “bye,” or even “I love you” (be still my heart…), she doesn’t respond to most conversation. 

Telling her “Charlotte, we are going back to California tomorrow. We are picking you up from school, driving one hour to Boston, then boarding a flight for six hours, staying overnight at a hotel, then driving an hour back to our home” doesn’t get any response, not even a glance. Is she listening? I think so. Does she understand? I don’t know how much. Is she smart? Absolutely; things just get lost in translation. 

The plan is to wait until the last moment to board the flight, shaving a few minutes off of the time in our seats. But Charlotte has other ideas in mind. She starts tugging us towards the gate as soon as people start lining up. So much for our strategy. 

We shuffle onto the airplane with our carefully curated carry-ons. A sack of odds and ends from the toy section at the dollar store, a bag brimming with all her favorite snacks, and of course her beloved iPad. 

I hear a little voice chattering in the seat behind. It’s little Charlotte Grace and her Mom! It feels like a blessing for our little journey. I got my God shot after all.

Dear reader, she will indeed prove to be a blessing, but not one I imagined…

The Story Continues next week in: Chapter 2 A Smooth Take Off… or is it? Things start to go wrong! Subscribe to the blog so you won’t miss a moment of it.

Want to hear this story read as an audio book? Hear me read the first 5 mini chapters in my podcast!