The Shift By Jamie Kirkpatrick

Horror stories about holiday travel abound. Spoiler alert: this is not one of them…

I hope you all got my postcard—the one I sent last week from Montana. Well, we’re back home now, and I’ve been thinking about our time up on the mountain.

First things first: kudos to United Airlines. It’s easy to squawk about airline travel these days, but I must say: United got all 26 of us—13 of whom are under the age of 15—to Montana and back without a hitch. No cancellations, no delays, no lost luggage, no unruly passengers, hardly even any turbulence. OK; so maybe the planes were jam-packed, but that makes the end result all the more impressive. So, heartfelt thanks to the pilots, the flight crews, the baggage handlers, and the ground personnel. You take a lot of hits, but not from me. Not this time.

Thanks, too, to all the folks who made this particular jaunt possible; the unsung heroes. People like a server named Heidi working the early shift at a restaurant in the Kalispell airport who somehow managed to get everything right for 14 of us and smiled the whole time. Her mantra was, “Sure; no problem.” Or the writer-turned-Uber driver named Jarred in Montana who rescued us when another Uber driver who shall remain nameless screwed up our reservation; Jarred got us down the mountain and to the Kalispell airport with plenty of time to spare. Or the taxi driver named Yohannes from Ethiopia who helped us load and unload a lot of awkward and heavy paraphernalia—skis, boot bags, and heavy suitcases—upon our weary arrival back in Washington. If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a lot of good people—friendly, efficient, people—from all over the world to bring us safely home again. Thank you!

When I woke up this morning in my own comfy bed with no agenda other than to unpack and prepare for an impending snow storm—by the way, it’s a lot colder here in Maryland than it was in Montana—I felt something had shifted. It’s just an amorphous feeling, maybe only induced by all that high-altitude oxygenated blood still circulating in my veins, but it’s there nonetheless. You may recall that I’m not a skier, so I missed out on a lot of the downhill shenanigans, but nevertheless I was revitalized by the beauty of the American West—its mountains and lakes, its dreams of glory, its open, friendly people, and, yes, even its sad history. (Whitefish lies in a valley between the Flathead and Blackfoot Reservations.) We live on a vast continent—it still boggles my mind that we can fly from almost one end of this country to another in a matter of hours—and maybe my mental shift is a reflection of my renewed appreciation for America. I know, I know: there’s a lot that is unsettled and scary right now, but this morning, my focus is on what’s right, not on what’s wrong.

But I think my shift is due to something else. Like it or not, I was the patriarch in Montana. I certainly don’t mean I was the person who organized or bankrolled all this, or the head of either of the two mountain households, or the skier who logged the most runs, I just mean that when we were all together, I was the oldest person in the room. Moreover, I’m an outlaw, a member of this clan by the grace of marriage and universal family acceptance. That is a precious gift in and of itself, so even though I didn’t ski a lick, and despite being felled by a bad cold for a few days, I still had a good time,  Sure, I look at the over 400 iPhone photos of the little kids and grownups all bundled in their fancy snow gear, riding lifts to the summit and then skiing back down the mountain, or back home après ski, celebrating the new year and two birthdays, and I feel a little sad that I missed out on some of the fun. On the other hand, I logged a lot of hours in front of a cozy fire, read two good books, and got a lot of writing done. I have no complaints.

And you know what else? I got more hugs and made more memories than any outlaw deserves. OK, so maybe It gets a little chaotic at times, but if there’s a more loving crowd anywhere, on any mountain, I’d be surprised.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon.