Secret of life discovered: luggage

We were on our way home from a brief but active trip out of town this weekend when I had something of an epiphany. OK, I’m going to call it an epiphany. Others in the vehicle used somewhat judgmental words like “delusion,” but I’m going to let that slide. Apparently the wise man is seldom respected in his own town. Or Toyota.

Anyway, while on the downhill side of our journey, I realized the saga of my entire married life can be summed up in one word. And it’s not “plastics.” It’s “luggage.”

Bear with me here, since I’ve basically spent most of my matrimonial life as sort of a native bearer. And luggage has told the tale.

When the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I were first married, we had minimal luggage needs, mostly because we had minimal to pack and little need for anything we’d be packing. I mean, we’d just gotten married here…

Then, we started having children. And it’s at that point that I discovered that for the first year or so, they were, basically, luggage. Cute luggage. Adorable luggage. Thankfully resembling their mother luggage. Somewhat noisy, occasionally smelly luggage.

Thanks to child carriers, we could take them everywhere. Thanks to some very good state statutes, we were sort of required to. We were also not allowed to see if they fit in the overhead bin. Not that I wanted to. Much.

Then came the semi-ambulatory “every errand an expedition” phase. That’s when leaving the house required about an extra hour and a U-Haul’s worth of “portable” strollers, baby beds, diaper bags, backup diaper bags, outfit changes, a case of formula, assorted pacifiers, blankets, stuffed animals and about a gross of diapers (soon to become gross diapers). Thankfully, we were only going about half a mile to the mall, where we’d unpack all this stuff, forget why we came, load it all up and just go back home.

This is when you kiss what passed for a sports car goodbye and break down and buy the fanny pack of automobiles, the minivan. It’s either that or one of you has to drive the support vehicle.

Eventually, our children grew into the “I wanna help” phase of luggage. It’s so cute. It’s so adorable. It’s a 5-year-old dragging an expensive leather duffel bag you got for an anniversary present across a freshly asphalted parking lot by a formerly un-tenuously connected strap before hefting it with all the might they could muster at the opened back end of the car and letting it land on the tailpipe.

Now I’m not confirming I bribed my children into just letting me load the car by promising them I’d buy them a puppy. However, one of our dogs was named Samsonite.

Time marches on to the phase where your children can, in fact, help you. They’re just too busy sulking, scowling, looking at their phones and complaining there is nothing to do at this multi-million dollar resort next to an amusement park, a go-cart track, an ice cream parlor, a water park and the Lost City of Gold.

Of course, their luggage is incredibly light because “you didn’t tell them to bring both shoes!”

Finally, you reach the Promised Land of parenthood: the point at which you can toss them the keys and tell them the luggage goes in the back. At this point they’re too old to sulk and too young to claim they’ve got a bad back/shoulder/ knee/attitude, and they don’t want to have to explain to the paramedics why you had a heart attack (or at least faked one) in a hotel parking lot.

And then, when the kids have flown the coop and it’s just you and your wife, the luggage situation finally gets simple again. There’s a bag for you, a bag for her, a bag for the pills, ointments, that sleeping machine, the protein drinks…

Frankly, I remember it as being a lot less complicated.

So, in a way, we’ve finally come full circle, back to where we and our luggage started. Except, we’ve discovered that our “full circle” is actually sort of a Figure Eight.

Because when you’re traveling with a grandchild, you have to bring the overnight bag, the change of clothing bag, the allergy medicine/ bandage/300 outfits and matching hair bows bag, the blanket, the stuffed animal, the backup stuffed animal…