What Goes Around, Comes Around

Storm-watching with Cathy and Lucy 

After a nice uneventful flight, I arrive in Lawrence, Kansas.  Cathy greets me with a big hug and ongoing storm updates.  She even shows me a map that predicts exactly when the torrential rain will hit.  "You're scaring me," I say, and focus on the Baggage Carousel, one of my favorite places to experience humanity and all its quirks in close proximity.

Up first:  The little boy standing next to me plops his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack onto the carousel, just to watch it go round and round.  His mother tries to contain her fury, after he asks for the 18th time when his backpack will come back.  It's tempting to tell him, "Never," but I don't want to add to his mother's overall loss of control. Plus, I'm a little worried about the backpack now.  What if the universe decides at that moment to teach that boy a valuable, Joni M lesson?  As in, "Don't it always seems to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

The universe shows mercy.  The backpack comes back, much like the Teenage Mutant Turtles, popular when the eldest was the youngest, enjoying his status as only child.  Well, that didn't last long, did it? The first time he met his little brother, all he could think of was what I had been telling him -- for nine months of pregnancy -- that the baby would have a gift for him.  Good thing at nearly four years old, he didn't question the logic of such a miracle.  Upon viewing his brand new baby brudda, he got down to basics.  "You said something about a gift?" he asked, channeling my Russian grandmother.  Magically, I produced the gift his new rival had managed to procure, in-utero:  A teenage mutant ninja turtle toy.  What goes around comes around, be it backpack or big-time nostalgia.